


Miss Fisher and The Year of Tropes

by whopooh



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Gen, MFMM Year of Tropes, Meta, fanfic analysis, trope analysis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2018-11-22 03:19:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 37,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11371497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whopooh/pseuds/whopooh
Summary: Twelve months of tropes with Miss Fisher - from soulmates via bottle episodes to time and space and far beyond!This is a non-fiction fanwork, where I discuss the tropes from the MFMM Year of Tropes; the different ways the tropes are interpreted in the fanfics; and what this brings to the analysis of Phryne Fisher and her world.This work is now complete!It includes all the tropes, from January through November, plus a chapter for the October Bonus trope.





	1. When the soulmate trope meets Miss Fisher’s world of choice and freedom

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fire_Sign](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fire_Sign/gifts).



> The overviews mention _all fics_ that are published within the challenge - and the challenge is open for anyone who wishes to join, no restrictions! Hope you enjoy - and that this might inspire to some sleuthing among the fanfics! (and maybe some writing too)

I am super intrigued and happy by the way the January trope challenge about writing a soulmate AU for Miss Fisher has turned out! So many good fics (and a few writers even writing more than one, or stories with several chapters!) I have seen that more people than me have really enjoyed reading them.

The soulmate AU [(more info here)](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Soulmates) is really a rather odd trope to begin with – and one I have only known about for a while – and this is what made us start the discussion that turned into the challenge. It is an alternate universe where soulmates are somehow bound together by fate. This is most often shown by some kind of sign or identifying mark on their skin – the connection between souls thus made carnal and readable, explicitly shown on the body. There is a strong longing for harmony, perfection and complete bonding underlying this idea.

I think the reason why this trope proved to work so well for the MFMM fic is twofold:

First, because it is a change to the world that is thorough enough to upend everything in the story, making us scrutinize it and try to make sense of how that idea would fit in, and then assemble the story again; creating a new world that still isn’t too far from the original.

Second, because this idea really goes _against_ so many things in the Miss Fisher universe – and in a way that gives much energy to the stories. Miss Fisher is all about respect, choice and free will, about resisting ideas of there being only one correct way of being in the world, and also resisting ideas like a woman can only fulfill herself through love and family. Phryne Fisher is a basically anti-romantic character, who nevertheless falls in love – and when she falls in love, it is sneaking up on her, it is not following the standard routes about romance, and it will never be the sole focus of her life.

This antagonism between Miss Fisher and the soulmate concept is so productive. It makes the writer think: _How could this work? What would change and what would stay the same? How could it be tweaked to fit the basic ideas of Miss Fisher’s world?_ It would not be very interesting if the story originally had this idea in it – it is interesting precisely because it hasn’t got that at all, at the same time that there is such an undeniable resonance between the lady detective and the inspector.

The soulmate trope can be seen as romantic, the idea that there is someone meant for you, someone you are simply drawn to – but it can also be seen as rather horrible, that you are fated to one person and your free will is therefore taken away from you. And there is so much room for poking at the idea, questioning its logic, and allowing it to play out or subvert it in different ways.

I love this kind of pondering, and working things through in fiction, and using this impulse of ”what if”. What would happen if Phryne and Jack were soulmates? If Phryne didn’t have a soulmate? If Phryne had an unexpected soulmate? If Jack really had Rosie as a soulmate, but it still didn’t work out? What if the soulmate system turned out to be horrifying? Or ambiguous and difficult to understand? The trope proved to be a great fic generator (here is [the link to the full collection](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFFMJan2017/works)).

Many different systems have been used or invented in the fics, and so many different attitudes to it. The mark being something you just have on your skin, a similar or compatible mark that show your affinity. The mark being etched in, by natural forces, and showing the first words your soulmate will say to you – something that of course influences how people live their lives. The mark as something you have on your skin, but that isn’t always so easy to pinpoint to just one person, leaving room for a lot of ambiguities. The mark being a tattoo of the other person’s name. The other person making you suddenly see the world in colour, or there being an outward sign of you belonging together when you meet. The fate being shown through a countdown of a clock, until you meet ’the one’. – When explored they show different parts of the idea of fate, and how they affect people’s lives.

Above all, many stories explore Phryne’s defiance or complicated relationship to the idea of being fated. There are so many great discussions about how she would hate that, and this is one of the really interesting things – how well the idea of choice, and of fate not at all always being good for you, is brought out in the meeting between Miss Fisher and the trope.

There are two main strands in the fics, I would say. First: the soulbond is there, and Phryne is reluctant or unknowing. She meets Jack without the knowledge that he is her match, and the revelation is a big turning point. Or, second, the soulbond is not there, and they fall in love in spite of this, the romantic part being that choice can overrules external ideas about fate. 

In Fire_Sign′s [“Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFFMJan2017/works/9167572) and Sarahtoo’s [“Wide Open to the Sun”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFFMJan2017/works/9165496), Phryne is – at least probably? – without soulmate, a free person compared to most people that cannot choose their own lives. In flashofthefuse’s [“The Sole Requirement”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFFMJan2017/works/9165529) (that turns the soulmate concept cleverly into a political idea used to take control over people) and @whopooh’s [“Phryne Fisher’s Sense of Freedom”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFFMJan2017/works/9148132), Phryne has that fated or forced connection with René, but the connection is not allowed to decide over her – she uses her free will anyway. In Fire_Sign′s mentioned fic and in ollyjay’s [“Another Chance”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFFMJan2017/works/9193916), Jack is a soulmate to Rosie, but with very different results, the one showing that such a designation doesn’t mean anything in the end compared to experiences and choice, the other bringing the trope all the way to its most uncanny extreme by making Jack not able to resist when his soulmate Rosie calls, even when it is actually against his will – it is a heart-breaking story. Heart-breaking and not-romantic is also aljwritesphryne’s [“The gloves are off…”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFFMJan2017/works/9491831) about Rosie, that is being manipulated by Sidney Fletcher in a callous way, also bringing to the fore the ambiguity of the whole soulmate idea and of knowing who is the right one from a mark – the more hopeful second part, [“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFFMJan2017/works/9535217)is set within the same AU and is further exploring the ambiguity. 

In many stories, Phryne does have the connection with Jack, but she is very reluctant to give this kind of power over to ‘fate’, or doesn’t even realise until they already know each other. Yeoyou’s [“Illusion of freedom”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6580138/chapters/15055165) and theeyeoftheoncomingstorm’s [“They tell a story”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7671811), the soulmates on their own skin receive the scars from the other person’s injuries, and as they emerge, you realise things about what the other must be living through. In Redbrunja’s [“Love is not love when it alterations finds”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4429487) the world instead bursts into colour for a person when meeting their soulmate. Jack grumbles when he realises Phryne does this to him, but he also wonders if she doesn’t do the same for everyone.

Ladyroxie’s [“Fortune and Men’s Eyes”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFFMJan2017/works/9383258) and Sarahtoo’s [“The Breathings of Your Heart”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFFMJan2017/works/9339740) give a real, deep connection between Phryne and Jack, but lets it be hidden from them. This means the two of them meet without this knowledge already being between them, and they can form an opinion about each other freely, before the revelation. In Sarahtoo’s fic the connection is that they can communicate through writing on their own skin, and they do this without knowing who the other is, which means they have one official and one secret connection, without knowing it’s the same person. In Ladyroxie’s, the mark is not destinying a person to simply one person, but is a kind of anima that highlights some characteristics of the person. It is possible to combine with more than one other person, and first after Phryne and Jack have fallen completely in love are they allowed to see the other’s mark as a kind of confirmation.

In Sassasam’s [“Shall we Stick by Each Other as Long as we Live”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFFMJan2017/works/9180607), the system is unknown for most, but Phryne hears about it from a fortune teller. This means the whole society is not formed by this idea, and Phryne can privately dismiss the idea and resist it as long as possible, and when she finally realises she shares a mark with Jack, she still hesitates. 

In Scruggzi’s [“Independent Souls”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFFMJan2017/works/9300701) and Rithebard’s [“The Glowing Light of Time”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFFMJan2017/works/9192710), there are primarily sincere discussions about fate and the soulmate idea – I adore scruggzi’s tag “Tipsy philosophising”. Kid_n_the_hall‘s [“Positively charged”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFFMJan2017/works/9171679) as well as missingmissfisher‘s [“A perpetual feeling”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9529562/chapters/21547451) explore the bond or resonance between them poetically and not seen within a system – I love that the fics in this challenge go all the way from these to Ollyjay’s and flashofthefuse’s systemic criticiques. 

In 221aubrina’s [“Skipping Stones on Still Water”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9232127/chapters/20937641), the soulbonding takes place throughout Phryne’s and Jack’s whole lives, all the way from a meeting in childhood, and in loopyhoopyfrood‘s [“Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFFMJan2017/works/9215210) the bond is also in future lives, so they meet again in our time, and in comeaftermejackrobinson’s [“Hieroglyphs”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9212261/chapters/20893553) this is instead expanded backwards, into former lives and harking back all the way to Antony and Cleopatra. Here, the romantic part of the notion is explored – the resonance between these two characters, and that the resonance makes them irresistible for each other. PromisesArePieCrust’s [“Night Train to Melbourne”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFFMJan2017/works/9399236) instead creates a universe where soulmates per definition are not in a romantic relation, but friends that can help each other through their affinity, and the idea that a soulmate would also be romantically involved is taboo, rather like incest. Phryne’s soulmate is Mac, but her love interest is still Jack. And Jack’s soulmate is an old lady, which for some reason is incredibly adorable. 

Also in olderbynow’s [“The Place Where He Fell When He Saw The Stars”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFFMJan2017/works/9533054), the soulmate part is promising to be complicated by not being about romance, but in a completely different, and rather teasing, way. mercurialbianca’s [“Like Ink, Unto my Skin”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFFMJan2017/works/9259352) explores not Phryne and Jack, but Bert. It takes as its departure the idea that soulmates can be both friends and lovers, and that there is not only one in a life.

As this shows, this trope is most often very idea driven, sometimes even philosophical. There are also very much emotions at play, and thoughts about how this kind of bond impacts both relations and society as a whole. There are so many great details about the backstory and the story from the episodes, about defiance, youth, war, experience, life, friendship, and love. Details that I cannot bring up here – you’ll just have to go and read the very different takes on the idea of ’being destined’ for someone.

And I would love to hear your thoughts, please feel free to comment!


	2. Miss Fisher and the plight of miscommunication – February’s trope challenge

You remember I couldn’t help but write a post about the soulmate trope of January, because it was so much fun and gave food for so much thought. The same really proved to be true for the miscommunication trope, so I decided to write about that one too. I remember that when the trope was announced, Quiltingmom was not the happiest in the fandom, fearing all the angst that would come up with this trope. She even taught me that “smh” means “shaking my head”. So, I decided to do the organisation of this post in a Quiltingmom proof way, by ordering them after their amount of angst, starting with the lightest and going to Ladyroxie. (I’d love some feedback from you about where you draw the line between nicely angsty and too angsty in this line!)

This is actually a very reasonable way to structure the stories. The nice thing with miscommunication – apart from it fitting Phryne and Jack and their way of behaving rather well – is that it can take turns in very different directions. The plot itself is usually one of comedy – in that classic sense of the word, which means the ending is happy – since miscommunication really needs to be cleared up for the story to feel completed. But that gives ample opportunity for different roads to be taken – and very different length of fic – between the start and the happy ending; I have made a division into humour; humour with an angsty part; angst light; and angst. [(Here is the full collection.)](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMFeb2017/works)

I am delighted that the February fic covered all of these possibilities, and in so many different ways. The wonderful humour part saw olderbynow’s [“Across Frayed Wires"](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMFeb2017/works/10023581), where Jack gets a message from Hugh over a very bad line. We are given the internal view of a delightfully overthinking Jack that tries very hard to not think about a certain lady detective, but when the message says “alarm” and “Fisher” he cannot help but associate this to Phryne. The message

> made no damn sense at all, but still had Jack’s heart climbing into his throat as his mind helpfully supplied filler words that essentially translated the sentence into “Miss Fisher has done something reckless again and is in danger.” It was the sort of phone call he spent half his days expecting, of course.

Unfortunately for Jack, when he stumbles into Wardlow he instead disturbs Phryne in the middle of a tryst with a lover, and the mortification of Jack and all his awkwardness and thought-processes are adorable.

More humour and teasing with regard to their sexual relationship is present in loopyhoopyfrood’s [“Mistaken”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMFeb2017/works/10021157). This is an original take, set before the timeline of the episodes, and gives us a sweet and fun and mistakenly heated encounter that is completely packed with misunderstandings, and poor Jack gets pushed into doors no less than two times by a very insistent Miss Fisher. A third teasing with the sexual theme is Sassasam’s [“Miss Communication”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9647357/chapters/21795824) that is set after the last episode. Phryne writes from England a rather juicy letter to Jack, that also quotes some of his own not completely innocent phrases from an earlier letter, but puts it in the wrong envelope. The exact look on Aunt P’s face when she reads that scandolous letter we are left to imagine from the line “with eyes almost bulging from their sockets.” Jack, poor duck, on the other hand, receives a letter that talks about embroidery.

A final predominantly humourous fic is ollyjay’s [“Nine times out of ten”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9574994/chapters/21650444). It is a delightful story of Phryne deciding to play match-maker and implicating Jack in that, while on the boat back home to Australia. It is rather emma-esque in the way her plan goes rather wrong, the girl Jack was meant to pay attention to suddenly interested in him and not in the original beau she was aiming to make jealous. Suddenly they find themselves in a situation where Jack has to play the role of not wanting Phryne, and Phryne the role of trying to get him – all while they secretly have an established relationship, that is still a bit shaken by the roles they play. It’s a wonderful way of contrasting their true relationship with the fake one and with what the people around them are believing about them. Above all there is a delicious tension – her decision forcing Jack to play a part, and then she herself not being sure when he is playing and when he’s sincere. Phryne faces emotional turmoil and realisations, while the humourous aspect is still the main one.

From this, the step is not far to flashofthefuse’s [“Mistaken relations”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMFeb2017/works/9644228), that I decided to label as the first humour with an angsty part. The fic introduces an embarrassing moment when Phryne thinks Jack has asked her to come over, and while she has decided to surprise him with hardly any clothes on, he comes home with another woman. Awkwardness ensues and Phryne is thrown off-kilter a little bit, feeling unsure and a little bit jealous, but at the same time knowing she has no right to be jealous. And incredibly sweetly, what really annoys her is that “he was laughing, Mac. Before he opened the door, I could hear him laughing.” Phryne and Jack are so acutely aware of not pressuring the other that they completely fail in communicating what they want. Jack’s sister – because that’s the mysterious woman – asks him:

> “So, you’re not worried about her?”  
>  “Because of this? No. I worry about her getting herself arrested, or possibly shot, but this kind of thing? No.

Of course, the readers just want to tackle Jack at this point, but he perseveres, and it’s probably lucky he has a clever sister. She has the same no-nonsense take on things as her brother, at least: “I hope I get another chance to meet her while I’m here, preferably fully clothed.”

In Fire_Sign’s [“As stimulating as black coffee”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMFeb2017/works/9618617), Jack has followed Phryne to England just for them to realise that they aren’t working, sexually:

> It’s fine,” he said. “You just surprised me.”  
>  “I’m aiming higher than fine, Jack.”  
>  The man actually pouted. “Well, I certainly wasn’t achieving it.”

They have a wonderfully ridiculous argument and part ways, which is a very fun turn of the reunion in England – of course that’s not the end of it though.

PromisesArePieCrust's [“Maybe more?”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMFeb2017/works/10023611) is a lovely short take on the question of Phryne and marriage, as she wakes to a note left by Jack that seems to say “marry me?” Phryne is rattled: “When she’d first read it, she couldn’t help the words that left her mouth: first a curse, followed by “Oh, Jack, no— why would you do that?!”” As the trope is what it is, maybe he didn’t exactly – and it plays out in a lovely way.

The final humourous fic is collingwoodgirl’s [“Licence to Thrill”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9645443/chapters/21790994) and its theme of overhearing. Without him noticing, Phryne overhears Jack talking with colleagues, and is appalled as she realises he is talking rather demeaningly about her. Everything she ever thought about him crashes down completely, the betrayal is enormous, and she walks into his office and hits him hard in the face. Jack’s reaction is wonderful – without taking his eyes off her, he asks the other policemen to leave them alone:

> For nearly a full minute, there was nothing but silence. All three men appeared to have been turned to stone by the furious goddess that stood before them. It was only when Jack reached up and, unbelievingly, dabbed at his cheek that she was reminded he was still flesh and blood.  
>  “Collins—” Jack growled, his eyes never leaving hers.  
>  When Hugh didn’t move, Jack barked again. “Both of you! Out. Now.”

And Phryne “found it largely reminiscent of a hostage negotiation. It was immensely satisfying.” What follows is a delicious conversation where he tries to understand her fury, she slowly realises that they had actually been talking about something completely different from what she’d gathered, and an equally delicious making up.

In the category angst light I place three fics. @suigeneris221b‘s [“Someone is waiting”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMFeb2017/works/9582374) gives us Jack finding out through the newspaper’s gossip column that Phryne has married in London. He decides to immediately repress all his feelings until he can go home and have a breakdown in peace. It’s both humorous and angsty, and Mac’s telegrams to Phryne asking what the heck she is doing are great. As the trope is miscommunication, we probably shouldn’t take the newspaper’s story at face value, and we get truly wonderful interactions between the triad of Phryne, Jack and Mac while trying to make it all right again. Something similar can be said about whopooh’s [“I’d know you anywhere"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9606932/chapters/21704462), where the slightly angsty misunderstanding instead stems from Jack being feverish after a knife wound, mistaking people for each other. Again, Mac is a solid rock for her BFF Phryne. In missingmissfisher’s [“A thousand times over”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9647132/chapters/21795296), the misunderstanding evolves from Phryne having received a faulty message, which makes her walk in on Jack having dinner with and comforting Rosie, and this then leads to several disastrous attempts at contact between the two. Finally, in a lovely turn, Jack manages to communicate through the flower language, but it wouldn’t have worked out without the translation help from her solid friend Mac, educated in the natural sciences.

Finally, the end of the spectre: the angst proper of miscommunication, which obviously can be rather heavy. In rositalg’s [“Old Habits Die Hard Holding On”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9623144/chapters/21740951) Phryne and Jack have just about started a relationship, and in a clever twist the fic in one single scene explores three things: Jack’s fear of Phryne wanting other men, the fear belonging to the threat of a serial killer in a case, and Phryne’s fear that goes back to her backstory with René. There is a flinch in the fic that is really devastating. Two fics deal with mistaken news of death: comeaftermejackrobinson’s [“The tell-tale heart”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9647015/chapters/21794894) explores a possible parallel to “Blood at the Wheel” – if it was instead Phryne who at that moment in time would receive a message that Jack had died, and also discovering that he had put her down as ‘next of kin’: “He had listed her as his next of kin and had never said a word about it. She could have killed him for putting her through this, really, had he not been already dead”. omgimsarahtoo’s [“In the Next Breath”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMFeb2017/works/9660338) explores the Phryne receiving mistaken news of Jack’s death when they are already in an established relationship – the feeling of loss is acute:

> Her head swam, and when she dropped her hand from her eyes, she could see Dot’s concerned face, black spots swimming through her field of vision. Ha, dots on Dot. The thought made her huff out a laugh, and she clapped a hand over her mouth, horrified.

Only minutes after the news, Jack comes home to a devastated household, and acutely heightened from the thought of the loss are Phryne’s emotions and the feeling of making love to him.

The last fic is the most angsty one, Ladyroxie’s [“Between the Shadow and the Soul”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9827864/chapters/22068863). In this multi-chapter case fic, Jack disappears on his way to England without a trace, and as Phryne doesn’t even know he decided to follow her, it takes time before anyone starts to miss him – a nightmare in itself. Jack has been badly injured by a person who steals his identity to travel, and when Phryne finally realises he’s gone missing, she investigates, takes help from an old friend in England, and goes to Egypt to try and find him. It is very suspenseful and the question is if she’ll manage to find him, and in time. Jack’s injuries here were so brutal that 221aubrina in [“The Library”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10027424) – which here can serve as a sweet appendix to the trope – wrote a wonderful meta story about the librarians that take care of all the ‘Jacks’ that have been out in circulation among the fanfic writers and have been damaged. After Ladyroxie’s fic, the librarians check the injuries and note:

> “Yeah… he’ll need a good deal of extra time and care in The Restoration Lab.“  
>  Norton shook his head. "Huh. Pretty bad then, eh?”  
>  Harris nodded to his colleague. “We might have to bring a couple of the other copies out before this edition’s fit to be checked out again, if it ever is.”  
>  “Think he might have to go to the Special Collections Wing?” Norton queried.

Thus we can, even in this journey towards more and more angst, end on a humorous note.

This was the February trope, and I look very much forward to reading stories of March’s trope, “Bottle episode”.


	3. Miss Fisher and the Close Quarters – March’s prompt

The March prompt proved to be a slightly different challenge than the earlier prompts. The bottle episode prompt, or Close Quarters, means that there is a limited amount of people and a constricted scenario, but other than that, it’s up to the writers imagination. This means we got lovely fics during March, but less easy to categorise. For the soulmate prompt, I could organise the post after how the writers used the idea of a soulmate; for the miscommunication prompt after the amount of angst the miscom created. Here, I will attempt to do it after the scenarios created.

One thing can be said immediately about the trope – it proved to be the fodder for fun romps and sweet stories, not the trampoline for angst (I know Quiltingmom must be very disappointed about that).

I cannot help but start with the clever fic that takes the designation literally, and actually is about a bottle, fromalonglineoftvdetectives’s [“Bottle of Red”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMMar2017/works/10536243). Here we have the constriction of it all being set in the kitchen, and Jack and Mr Butler the only people there (even if Phryne is very present in their dialogue). It’s a lovely short and intimate moment between the two men, after Jack has just left Phryne’s boudoir, and Mr Butler gives Jack some advice from his own life – all revolving around that red wine bottle he presents Phryne with at the end of “Murder and Mozzarella”.

Then there are fics with a specifically constricted view or scenario.

loopyhoopyfrood’s, [”There Was A Star Danc’d”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10451097/chapters/23070573) (not yet finished) is a modern AU, where Jack (a sports star) and Phryne (a dancer) are participating in a dancing program on tv. The scenario is the constricted space of the training, where Phryne pushes Jack’s abilities and forces him to work very hard, while the tension between them is rather strong. In missingmissfisher’s [“A matter of infinite hope”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10421289/chapters/23048817), Phryne and Jack need to hide in a confessional booth – “It’s a good thing we’re so well acquainted, Inspector, as it looks like we may be here for a little while!” This proves to be a very intimate matter – both in how close they are, and as they first happen to listen to a confession, and then confess pivotal parts of their lives to each other. The space thus proves to be very inspirational.

Sassasam deals in [“Don’t Even Have to Get Out of Bed”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMMar2017/works/10366236) with some serious bedside detecting, all done from Phryne’s bedroom. Phryne has been put to rest because of a sprained ankle and Jack tries to cheer her up in two ways simultaneously, first by bringing a case to her so she can solve crime with him without leaving the bed, and second by some action of the more physical variety, though the ankle mustn’t be disturbed. This way, we get the chance to hear Miss Fisher say “Well I’m not just going to lie on my back and think of England” as well as this dialogue:

> “Show me, by climbing over me,” she breathed. “And stabbing me.”  
>  Jack shook his head. “Truly, your idea of foreplay is bordering on the macabre.”  
> 

Also in whopooh‘s [“The Learning of Detective Skills”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMMar2017/works/10400169), there is bedide detecting going on, although in a different way. The fic is all set at the hospital, in a sickroom, where Jack and Hugh are laid up after having been hurt on the job. An added constriction is that the whole fic is told through Hugh’s point of view, of what he thinks and notices, as he decides to spend his time as a convalescent training his detective skills on his surroundings – in this case mostly Phryne and Jack: “There was no way two people could sound like this – like they had taken their thoughts and wrapped them up in words that didn’t really mean anything, to hand over to their conversation partner for careful unwrapping – if they were only casual partners.”

In flashofthefuse’s [“Best Laid Plans”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10470495/chapters/23104050) the constriction is, again, double – both in that Phryne and Dot happen to become locked up in a bank vault for a whole night, and in that the perspective is fully Phryne’s – not only as point of view, but everything is even narrated in her voice. There are plenty of lovely Phryne and Dot moments, and in the morning the third person coming onto the scene of the vault is an annoyed Jack. The push-and-pull between Phryne and Jack is great fun, and also especially interesting to follow from Phryne’s perspective, with her internal asides. It is fun and teasing, all the way to:

> “True.” (Not even I believed that pledge to stay out of trouble.) “Wasn’t it nice to actually be able to come to my rescue for once?”  
>  “Are you trying to say thank you, Miss Fisher? Because if so, you’re rather bad at it.”

But the fic is also a bit angsty as Phryne realises there is a lot at stake if she and Dot would be found out – both for Dot, Hugh, Jack, and herself.

From flashofthefuse’s fic, it’s the perfect transition to go into fics where Phryne and Jack – and sometimes someone else – are actually locked up. While the trope doesn’t explicitly say that people need to be locked in, the Miss Fisher universe obviously fits well with that concept – and this gives rise to much fun.

In star-l8‘s[“Lock Picking”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMMar2017/works/10140656), Phryne is dared by Jack – or decides to take it as a dare – that she cannot pick the locks in the police station’s cell. She decides to take him up in it although it’s late in the evening, which ends with her and Jack locked into the cells as she threw away the keys in her bravado. It is fun and sweet, and Hugh Collins becomes the means of liberation, which is rather mortifying for a Jack still groggy from sleep: "What was Hugh doing in his bedroom? And why was he inquiring about Miss Fisher?” Another take on Phryne and Jack in the cells is LadyRoxie‘s [“We Two Alone”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMMar2017/works/10297610). This time they have been intentionally locked up, having been arrested while undercover. The constriction is double in the sense that they are locked up but also separated, put in adjacent cells. Phryne is very tipsy, and Jack tries to take care of her from his own cell, and the fic is a thorough and emotional exploration into his intense feelings for her, Jack being completely disarmed by her innocence in tipsiness: “He’d mostly mastered the trick of withstanding her proximity when it was a shower of sparks, when she was lit up and glossy and fierce. (…) But seeing her like this, when all of those things had been left behind, was an ambush he hadn’t seen coming.”

In olderbynow‘s [“Back In The Ring”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMMar2017/works/10511010) the constriction is a very unexpected one – Phryne and Jack are stuck in a tree, with a bull pacing below them. It is such a fun fic where they banter about how they got into this situation, and Phryne is also riling Jack up with stories about her old friends, in response to him not giving anything away about his own feelings or desires. And also about food:

> “He makes the most delicious Sauce Bourguignonne,” she goes on ruthlessly.  
>  Their eyes meet. Her expression is challenging and it’s obvious that she’s angling for a fight. He blinks slowly.  
>  She huffs, clearly frustrated that he’s not rising to her bait.  
>  There’s silence for a blissful minute and then…  
>  “Now, when I went to Sweden in ‘21 I met this artist who was–”

I will not repeat it here, since I kind of overcrowded the comment section with it already, but I find it such a fun possibility that the bull in this fic can stand for Jack’s repressed desires and emotions, trapping the two of them in one place.

An equally humorous fic is ollyjay’s [“Two’s company…”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMMar2017/works/9806813) Here Phryne and Jack come to be locked up in a small space, but there is also a third person, the insufferable Miss Sumner. She is both the reason the door became locked and proves a specialist in backing Jack into corners. There is such fun tension in this triangle, as she both grates on Jack’s nerves (while he tries to be a gentleman) and flirts with him, and it’s wonderful to get to follow his reactions and inner snark, like “He thought he did well to keep the sarcasm to merely dripping, as opposed to torrential.” Phryne is mostly following the development from the sideline, a.k.a. the door trying to pick the lock:

> “You wanna hand up?”  
>  No, what I want is for you to be anywhere in the world but locked in this small room with me, he thought.  
>  "Jack?“ another more welcome voice came from behind him, "Don’t you think you’re being a tad over dramatic?”  
>  Possibly true, he admitted to himself, but hardly fair coming from the woman who had taken all of sixty minutes from their arrival in New York to put herself in the middle of a murder enquiry.  
>  "I’m almost certain Miss Sumner didn’t mean to lock us in the room.“

Finally, there are full cases or stand-offs based on the bottle ep idea. In Fire_Sign’s [“Hotel Homicide”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMMar2017/works/10311734) Phryne, Jack and Mac take on an incredibly unlikely and odd murder case – so unlikely even, that it proves to be based on a true case. The killed man was thought to have died of natural causes in an hotel room, “Until they opened him up and found his internal organs were practically liquified,” as Phryne interjects. The three friends have only a limited amount of time and are in one place, the hotel room where the murder took place (Phryne even locks them in for good measure) and Hugh helps them via telephone. They need to find clues to give them a new perspective on the murder in order to save a friend of Mac’s from the accusations. Phryne is glorious in her investigations of the room, and there is wonderful banter and discussion between the three of them:

> “Unfortunately that meant the local police decided that it was murder, and I half-expect them to accuse Mary of witchcraft to explain it away.”  
>  “Hmm,” hummed Jack. “Which would be unfortunate, as witchcraft wouldn’t even require her presence in the room.”  
>  “Perhaps she cursed his cow while she was at it,” Phryne retorted.

Last out, allimarie_xf, [“The Inside Man”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMMar2017/works/10532718) is a beautiful and intense fic about a bank robbery. Here a lot of people are involved, but all set in the same place, a bank. Both Phryne and Jack happen to be at the bank on errands, unbeknownst to each other, and suddenly find themself in the middle of a robbery. The two need to first realise that the other is there, and then they, without giving away that they already know each other, need to communicate wordlessly about what is going on – a feat they manage admirable. There is the very real risk that someone might get shot, and they both feel pangs of sadness about how the day could have been if they had just happened to walk into each other without any mayhem happening. Just as there is always a hindrance in the episodes, here Jack’s reverie – “His heart instantly began to beat faster, and his afternoon’s prospects, which had until this moment seemed drab and tedious, were suddenly suffused with possibility” – is interrupted by reality: “Oi! This here’s a robbery!”

The way Phryne and Jack communicate, their gazes and understanding of each other, are very intense – one could say this is rather an anti-thesis to last month’s trope, miscommunication. These are two people who understand each other, know each other inside and out, and trust each other:

> And as her gaze alighted on the object of the criminal’s attention, Phryne found herself looking directly into Jack Robinson’s impassioned eyes. (…) Jack! Even without his characteristic composure, his steady gaze supplied the ballast she hadn’t known she needed. (…) In an instant, Phryne processed Jack’s awareness that she recognized him, and read relief in his gaze and steel in his jaw.

And this joint ability they have is the only reason they actually make it out alive from the bank.

That was all for the March prompt [(here is the full fic list)](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMMar2017/works). So looking forward to see what fics might emerge from the april challenge, body swap.


	4. Miss Fisher and the art of swapping bodies or roles – April’s fic prompt

I would never have believed beforehand how fun the trope body swap/role reversal would turn out to be. I thought it would be almost impossible – but just like the soulmate trope in January, there is something about inserting an odd and unnatural element in a story that not usually has that, and then thinking about how you could make sense of it, that is incredibly rewarding. For me, that even meant contributing with more than one story, which is a little odd when doing the summary, but I’ll just have to manage anyway.

The wonderful thing with these tropes is that they can go in so many directions – and in a group of writers like ours, they also do. Taken literally or metaphorically, used as a trope or a theme, being predominantly humorous, sexual, or emotional – each fic simultaneously brings the enjoyment of that separate story and its idea, and adds to the larger enjoyment of the fics taken together. This makes these joint challenges so much fun – and also the creation of these overview posts.

This is the structure I have made for this post: I will start with the use of body swap written as a _theme_ , then turn to the weaker kind of swap, _the role reversal_ , going through _half-swaps_ , before ending with the _body swaps proper_.

The body swap used thematically rather than as a trope is the case in scruggzi, [“Ring of Roses”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10601652/chapters/23439312). The idea of body swap is very well used here as part of the case fic, tying it to a medical condition, the Capgras Delusion, where the ill person becomes a murderer from a belief their loved ones have been body swapped and replaced by something threatening. Making the murders a personal tragedy in more than one sense fits so well into the world of MFMM. The sadness of the case is woven together with the emotions and humour of the relationship between the detectives, and a lovely amount of snarky Mac on the side.

> ‘A serious scholar always seeks to improve himself Miss Fisher and you did appear to appreciate my firm grasp of German.’  
>  ‘I do like a studious man.’ She smirked up at him, leaning in to straighten his tie.  
>  Good God, thought Mac, it is far too early in the morning for these two. You would think the presence of an over-ripe corpse in the room would put them off, not that it ever has before.

There is also a very serious side to the treatment of mental illness that Phryne and Mac pick up on in a wonderful exchange, that we meet in an italicised retrospect: 

> _‘Of course, people will come up with all manner of ridiculous reasons for locking women away.’ The doctor observed with distaste._  
>  ‘Sadly true.’ Phryne had agreed. ‘I suppose we should be thankful neither of our families have ever paid too much attention to our lifestyle choices or either one of us could have ended up on the wrong end of a spurious diagnosis.’  
>  ‘Well between my unnatural appetites and your shameless pursuit of cock, there’s clearly something wrong with us.’ Mac responded, dripping sarcasm into her whiskey as she drained her glass.
> 
> ‘Unnatural appetites and the shameless pursuit of cock’ had become a favourite toast between the two of them for months after that conversation. Faced with the trembling, defiant face of Samantha Brown, it suddenly seemed far less of a joking matter.

Another thematic fic is kid_n_the_hall, [“Jane D’oh”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10827948) – a fun one-shot that is centred on Awkward Mac. Phryne and Mac being best friends is often explored with Mac commenting on Phryne’s relationships, and I love when the opposite happens and Mac is in the centre – like here, where Phryne uses all her detective skills on her friend: "Mac feels the Fisher radar scanning her and feels exposed so she grabs the manila folder and stares at a spot on the floor behind it. Phryne tilts her head, damn it, she’ll start sniffing like a blood hound soon, and moves towards the body draped in a white sheet."

Flipping Mac into the centre can be seen as a narrative role reversal (although not in their friendship, that is decidedly already equal). Then we also get the dialogue’s amusing way of mistaking whether they talk about the victim in the morgue or Mac’s lover, and finally there is a literal body swap at the morgue, due to Mac’s distraction. It is all fun, and to top it all up, also Jack is awkward, and this is commented on with the stunning image of “his whole being is sort of reluctantly turned towards Phryne like a moderate heliotrope”.

A third way of doing the swap thematically is fromalonglineoftvdetectives,[“The Most Vivid Dream”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMApr2017/works/10788360), where the body swap is in a dream, and Phryne envisions herself as another of Essie Davis’s roles, Elizabeth Woodville in “The White Princess”. It’s a deliciously meta oriented vignette, with Jack proposing that Phryne is such a wonderfully alive person that she might “occasionally have to overflow into other consciousnesses to express that life force…”.

On to the trope of role reversal, then, that is dominated by reversals between Phryne and Jack. This is such an interesting trope, opening up for many thoughts about canon and character – especially in a world like MFMM where equality and power dynamics are already so interestingly made – and on how those can be transposed while still keeping the character’s gist – to also in the reversal keep true to the characters. That gives so much enjoyment to the reader to try to follow. 

First I must mention the magnum opus of role reversal in this fandom, @promisesarepiecrust‘s[“City that works”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6065661/chapters/13903506). It is an incredible story, the role reversal set in a modern AU, where Phryne is a policewoman and Jack is a PI leading a liberal life. I am so impressed with how it changes the roles and the gender, but is very far from turning into some stereotypical male/female behaviours. It is a treat to explore the relationship through this lens – every thing the one character does, I as a reader first have to read like it stands, and then double back and consider how it would sound with the genders swapped back. In this challenge, we had the pleasure of a vignette from this AU, @promisesarepiecrust’s [“Light and True”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10829088). From the perspective of Phryne, the restrained detective, we have a a musing about their different ways of being: "She knew her appeal, in fact had very strong evidence of her appeal, and felt confident in it. It was simply that the currents around her were somehow tighter and more intense; it was that people got close to her and then were more interested, while the currents around him were broad and inviting, and nearly irresistible from the start."

and then:

> He was the only person she knew like this, someone with a seemingly boundless affection that was both deep and true but also light and easily shifted. And she did believe that he felt actual affection for the people around him. (—) ‘Light and true,’ she mused. She knew she could work with ‘true’; but could she work with ‘light’? Was it only possible for it to be light?

Another version is loopyhoopyfrood’s [“What’s in a name?”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMApr2017/works/10744692), that explores the reversal by making Phryne suggest that they switch roles for an undercover mission, so that Jack would be the wealthy Mr Fisher and she the accompanying Miss Robinson. The vignette is all about the setup and their banter:

> “Miss Fisher, I am not pretending to be you.”  
>  “Not me, Jack, don’t be ridiculous. I thought we’d already established that fans wouldn’t work for you.”

And it’s about Jack, overruled by the energy of Phryne, finally finding at least one small part where he can stand his ground.

In whopooh’s [“The Inspector Is In”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10613751/chapters/23471379), the role reversal is pulled through as a punishment from the Commissioner. He decides to punish Jack for going against his orders in the tennis case; when the Commissioner forbade Jack to collaborate with civilians he made Phryne an Honorary Constable. And so the Commissioner makes Phryne an Honorary Inspector with the power to take over City South station and become Jack’s boss. 

While Jack has to struggle with this development, the reversal makes them inhabit the other’s role, take over aspects of each other, and stretch into each others’ spaces – Phryne taking over the office and making his chair hers; Jack inviting her home for a nightcap and feeding her; Jack coming across one of her crime scenes randomly so Phryne has to rise from a crouch to face him. They also realise some things about why the other behaves in certain ways, and balance between the two: "She realised there was a distinct difference between having a nightcap at her place and at Jack’s. (…) She could feel her heartbeat accelerate and her stomach constrict. _Or wasn’t it because of the setting? Was she just experiencing what it meant to be Jack Robinson?_ "

As Phryne is at Jack’s house at a nightcap, she realises that “If she was to be Jack Robinson, she could at least make him a little bit bolder than he usually was.” The Commissioner didn’t really realise what kind of avalanche he actually set off when he appointed his Honorary Inspector.

An incredibly emotionally satisfying version of the role reversal is LadyRoxie, [“When Fortune Leads"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10776435), that hinges around the idea of reverting the very end of season 3 and the “Come after me” exchange: what if Jack was the one leaving Melbourne? As he is so much depicted as a pillar of his city, this becomes a very special move. Jack accepts a job offer in Sydney and comes to tell Phryne about it, and she attempts to celebrate it by champagne – probably the most disastrous champagne scene in the whole fandom, since none of them is the least in the mood for celebrating. Jack does not want to ask too much from Phryne, afraid she might feel caged – Phryne doesn’t want to be anything but supportive about him pursuing his career and making his own choices – thus none of them speak about their feelings, but instead try to suppress them and pretend that everything is fine, which is inadvertently another way of caging the other, not allowing them to choose what they want to be, without realising that.

> Sometimes, he was sure she had changed; sure that the ripple of attraction that was there had grown into something more for her, not just him. Once standing in her parlour, he’d made himself known, and he lived with that, surprisingly simply. He loved her, and she knew. He would not ask for more, for doing so would have him become the very person she needed him not to be.

The upheld facades and the rolling emotions behind them are a glorious contrast, the certainty in them both that it is all over, and a very short, fumbling kiss goodbye. Then the explosion of understanding and recognition in the end is like bathing in joy and happiness – this fic could easily be put in the hurt/comfort trope of May. It forced me to make a ridiculously long comment on the fic on AO3, so I won’t try to encapsulate it all here.

Over to the category that isn’t so much body _swap_ as some kind of out of body experience, a half body swap perhaps, without the full switch.  
missingmissfisher  & comeaftermejackrobinson’s [“I wander all the while”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10660152/chapters/23592165) explores Phryne out of her own body, while she is in a coma – working from the setup that it was indeed she who was in the car accident of _Blood at the Wheel_ , though she didn’t die but turned unconscious. Her life force, though, is so strong and lively it cannot be contained by her unconscious body. Instead she finds herself walking around in her world – at Wardlow, and seeking out her friends – and seeing it depopulated, desolate, and in mourning. Phryne is completely isolated, just an onlooker, while no one can see or hear her. Or, as it turns out, almost no one. Jane can, but she is afraid to tell anyone because she fears they will conclude she has inherited her mother’s insanity. She recognizes Phryne’s character: "But I think you’re trapped there, inside your own head. Your soul, your spirit… It has always been, well, restless and reckless. It wouldn’t like being trapped, right? It wouldn’t like being caged, unable to express itself."

It also turns out Jack can see her, but it takes work to make him believe he isn’t just dreaming. And then Phryne’s unconscious body suffers a heart arrest. It is a very emotional journey for Phryne, and for her makeshift family, as they face the possibility that she will never wake up again.

Another collaborative take of a half-swap is Jack coming into Phryne’s body, but she’s still there and they need to come to terms with that closeness, in ollyjay's & whopooh’s [“Show Not Tell”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10795629). The two detectives have fallen out and are not talking to each other, when a case they have been working on, separately and unbeknownst, goes wrong. Phryne is captured and Jack is badly wounded, and when he wakes up they realise he is there with her, in her mind. They can have no secrets for each other as they can sense both the other’s thoughts and feelings – which means they can freely banter in her head, but they cannot hide anything as the other is feeling what they feel while talking. This is a moment of understanding the other’s way of thinking and behaving. Jack, sure that Phryne doesn’t really love him, encounters her emotions about him:

> “Do you believe me now?”  
>  “Yes,” he said, feeling more than a little overwhelmed.  
>  “Thank goodness. It was getting quite ridiculous my having to argue that I knew my own mind.”

But he is also there when she flirts with their guard in order to get them out of the mess:

> “Who are you?” Phryne said in her best 'little girl in need of help’ voice.  
>  The man crouched down to help her sit up.  
>  _‘My God, I can’t believe that actually works.’  
>  ‘Shush!’_

All their internal bantering and realisations happen while they need to think fast and get out of captivity, to save the wounded Jack before it’s too late.

In the category of body swap proper, three fics explore one of the most intriguing possibilities of the trope – Phryne and Jack swapping bodies, and therefore also gender, while being in a relationship.

gaslightgallows’s chapter 517 of “You asked for it”, [“Incomprehensible”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4799084/chapters/23258448), explores this idea in drabble form – the forceful meeting of bodies when they are inhabiting each other’s, and in a beautiful way describing the meeting so it doesn’t really matter who is who – it all blends together: “This body knows what to expect, even if you don’t.” 

Collingwoodgirl's [“Perks”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMApr2017/works/10734579) is a very humorous and tongue-in-cheek version, exploring the idea that Phryne, sexually intrigued by having a male body, would have problems to reign herself in, not at all managing to be a selfless lover but quite the opposite:

> He’s annoyed with her but can’t help wincing in empathy as he watches her wrap a large hand around her softening cock, a hiss on her lips.  
>  “You promised you would try,” he pouts, unnerved further by the higher pitch of his voice and how much better it’s suited to pouting than he is accustomed to.

The swap here is voluntary, they have decided to try this out for fun – and then Phryne is so caught up with her bodily sensations that she becomes completely selfish. The characterisations are about yielding to pleasure or resisting, about being turned on by the other or by oneself, and also about being affected by things you couldn’t foresee. Phryne is narcissistic in a very fun way:

> “It’s just that I… I mean… you. You feel so good. I don’t know how you control yourself.”  
>  He barks a laugh. “Is that supposed to be a compliment? Because you just called yourself irresistible, Phryne.”

It is intriguing as a reader to try to understand and follow all the implications of them having swapped gender: ‘He isn’t surprised that she knows exactly how to touch her body like this but he had not expected to crave the roughness of his fingertips. “Not fair, Phryne.”’

In Sassasam's [“To Climb Into Your Skin”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMApr2017/works/10598163) (only available for registered users), the sexual exploration of the body swap is used empathically (even as Phryne has difiiculties not reacting sexually to the thought of inhabiting Jack’s body). The two detectives are in a relationship and have a row, where Jack retreats:

> "Perhaps we should end this then, while the hurt will still be minimal,” she’d finally snapped.  
>  “If that’s what you want.”  
>  “What do you want, Jack? You never say. You never give anything away.”  
>  “I want you to be happy.”  
>  “That’s not an answer.”

The two swap bodies during the night, and the reader gets to follow them in the morning as they slowly realise that something is wrong, trying to make sense of what has happened and how to inhabit the other’s body – and then in meeting their own. Jack wakes up to Dot wanting to help him to dress and is forced to encounter how Phryne is treated by some men; Phryne gets to encounter having superiors. They truly have to walk a mile in the other’s shoes, and see what they encounter. At the same time, they cannot resist exploring having the other’s body. Finally, they meet up and make a joint sexual exploration, in a way that is emotional and close, and where the reader has to keep on toe all the time to follow with the changed bodies and pronouns: "Jack felt his body flush and flood as Phryne’s masculine lips found his feminine ones. She was slightly rough but the body he was inhabiting ignited like dry tinder. Was this how she felt when he kissed her?"

I conclude with two body swaps that aren’t between Phryne and Jack. In whopooh's [“The Honourable Miss Fisher Is In”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMApr2017/works/10747182) Phryne has – and I am spoiling it a little bit now but otherwise it’s impossible to talk about it – swapped bodies with Mac. Jack is unaware of this as he comes to Wardlow, determined to _finally_ lay his heart out for Phryne. Mac tries to make as good a Phryne imitation as she can, attempting to not turn Jack down, while Mr Butler tries to help her along.

Phryne, in Mac’s body, comes to find Mac in Phryne’s body in an embrace with Jack:

> “Jack!” she exclaimed, horrified. “And… Phryne?”  
>  Phryne stared at Mac; they were both immobile. Then Phryne shook herself into action.  
>  “It’s not what it seems!” she said, loosening herself from Jack’s arms. Jack’s eyes left Mac for Phryne.  
>  “What do you mean? Isn’t it exactly what it seems?”  
>  “No!” Phryne said. “Well, yes! But no!” The last words were for Mac.

Jack realises something is very wrong, though of course he cannot guess the real reason but has to resort to other interpretations of the problem, while Phryne and Mac are intently trying to communicate with each other without speaking.

Last, but not least, ollyjay's [“A Day In The Life Of Senior Constable Collins”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMApr2017/works/10565361) creates a body swap between Dot and Hugh, and again this gives a glorious opportunity to walk one day in the other’s shoes. This is a wonderful setup where Dot is rather certain about the providential nature of the swap – “she felt there must be some deep purpose for this strange turn of events. Could it be to help Hugh understand the role of the modern woman?” – which will of course come back and bite her, because maybe Dot needs to learn something about Hugh’s life. Dot decides to go to work at City South, being Hugh for one day, and it’s lovely to follow both successes and problems, and she also gets to see another side of working with Jack Robinson as a boss.

The confusion is wonderful:

> Dot looked at the uniform that had been spotless this morning, there was now a rip at the cuff and the mud at the knees would take a special soak. My goodness she was going to be mad at herself when she got home and saw the extra time she would need at tomorrows laundry tub, not to mention the needlework. Perhaps she could rub the mud off and then she’d never notice? It occurred to her that, in a day full of the unexpected, this was probably not the strangest conversation she was going to have with herself.

Dot excels in some parts of the job, and has problems with others. When she is made to drive the car, as they have arrested a man, the Inspector tells the suspect: “I’m sorry about that, I hadn’t intended to torture a confession out of you.” Dot gets to see the interactions at the station, with the Commissioner and Jack, and when she, as Hugh, makes excuses for Dot not coming to work at Miss Fisher’s that day, she fumbles so it sounds like she is pregnant, while it’s really a more serious case of having another person inside your own body.

That was all for the April prompt [(here is the full fic list)](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMApr2017/works). I know there might be someone coming in late with their fic, and I’ll be happy to add it to this post if that happens. 

I’m looking forward to see what fics might emerge from the May challenge that is a much broader one – hurt/comfort. Thank you to Fire_Sign for organising the trope challenges! And I would love to hear your thoughts, please feel free to comment!


	5. Miss Fisher when Everybody Hurts - the May trope challenge

Although April is supposed to be the cruellest month, in the MFMM fandom that designation must be given to May instead, as it saw the monthly trope declared as hurt/comfort. What, we asked ourselves, were the poor lambs going to be put through now? Haven’t they already been enough through the wringer?

Hurt can come in so many different ways – physical, emotional, or maybe more symbolical or feared than actually happening. Unsurprisingly, the Miss Fisher fanfic included them all. It has – again – been a delight to read the trope fics of the month! (here is the full collection: [Everybody Hurts.](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMMay2017/works))

So, how to structure the hurt and its comfort in the best way? I decided to do it based on where the hurt comes from, and how the comfort for it is created. Most of the hurt is comforted through the relationship between Phryne and Jack, while some of the hurt also comes from it. As a rule, Jack takes most of the hurt, but there are also quite a lot of Phryne hurting.

First, there is hurt through _what could have been_. The hurt is coming from the fear of things that could happen, the ever present possibility of a sad ending.

First, Fire_Sign‘s [“Blame It On The Wireless”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10882743/chapters/24181998) beautiful and intense, where Phryne receives bad news about a raid Jack was leading. In the view of fatalities and Jack not contacting her, she fears the worst. One of the beautiful things with this fic is the way that nothing has happened to Jack, it is all in Phryne’s imaginations and fears and in the failed attempt to communicate. She is driven by worry and by the nagging feeling from never having told him to be careful. As Phryne drives to the hospital she fears the worst, and when she there encounters a Jack without a scratch, behaving as if nothing was unusual, she explodes. 

> Time stopped, her stomach flipped, a small, strangled sob escaped her mouth. He was standing in the hall, deep in conversation, with nary a scratch on him. Her eyes flicked over him twice. His suit wasn’t even rumpled, for heaven’s sake! As if sensing her presence he looked up, excused himself, and began to walk over.  
>  Phryne did the only thing she could think to do: she turned on her heel and walked away.

She drives home without a word, and when Jack comes to see what’s the matter, she tries to expel him but instead drags him into a frantic lovemaking: “She screamed when her orgasm hit, guttural and unfamiliar. The sound of grief that almost was.” The things that could have happened are looming above them, and the need to learn to deal with these kinds of things is pressing.

Another version of the “what could have been” is scruggzi’s [“Without Regret”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMMay2017/works/10865694). This gives – in a unrelentingly sad and poetic way – small snippets of alternate endings to Phryne’s and Jack’s story. The alternate endings are given shape and weight, flesh and blood, and the sadness is both in how they would not work out, and in how Phryne would die, proudly, but incredibly sad. There are lines like “When she sells the house, Mr Butler, with a sense of trepidation, returns a toy badge to its owner by request” and “The crystal glasses that never made it to his wedding arrive for him with her Will. He can’t believe that she is really dead. Then he can’t believe that after all this time he has finally succumbed to the myth of her invincibility.” In the end, scruggzi not being an incredibly cruel writer, there is the possibility of those versions not happening – but the conjuring up of them and giving them this weight lingers with the reader. In this way, the happy ending stands out as even brighter, in contrast to the sadness of the ones never (probably) really happening. If the answer to “who is hurting” in Fire_Sign’s fic is Phryne, in scruggzi’s, it is rather the reader that is hurting the most.

Also in QuailiTea’s short and poetic [“Take a Breath”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10976727), the hurt that could have been looms large – Phryne thinking about other people, in this case Camellia, risking to stand between her and a killer. In very few words, a whole story and a fight is hinted at, and the comfort is the knowledge that Camellia will survive, and a “solid, perfect shoulder” to lean on. The concentration of the double drabble heightens the images: “She could hear his voice comfortably rumbling around in his chest, warming her to her toes like a tumbler of whiskey.” 

Another unabashedly both sad and sweet hurt/comfort fic is loopyhoopyfrood‘s [“Last Words”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11022366/chapters/24563490). Here, the soulmate trope makes a comeback, in an ominous way. The system of soulmates is rather cruel – the words you have on your skin are the last ones your soulmate will say to you. What this would mean in terms of worrying, I can see this world consist of rather neurotic people. In this case, it turns out that the last words Jack’s soulmate will tell him is “Come after me, Jack Robinson”, and when Phryne says this to him at the airfield, he becomes scared. When he later receives news that a plane has crashed over the Indian Ocean, it’s perhaps not so surprising that Mac finds him “with bleeding knuckles and a hole in his office wall” – a wonderful image. And yes, it’s definitely Jack that hurts on this one. There is comfort too, but how I’ll leave for you to read.

One fic has taken the trope outside of the Phryne/Jack relationship, exploring Rosie’s hurt and heartbreak in a lovely, and lovingly, way, @longlineoftvdetectives [“What Comfort in Truth”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10938207/chapters/24336501). “Do you love her more than you once loved me?” That is Rosie’s question to Jack as she has been bound to stay over at Wardlow for the trial after “Unnatural habits”. It is such a poignant question – how does one compare loves? – and it is beautifully done since the answer is not a simple one. We follow Rosie’s perspective and feelings at meeting Phryne and seeing Phryne and Jack together, and it’s really agonizingly heart clenching.

> “I love you too darling,” Phryne said, in the easy manner of a woman who said this to the man on the other end of the phone several times a day.  
>  There was a time Rosie was that woman. But now she was utterly alone.

I just want to hug Rosie, and I feel so much for Jack too and how this makes him feel, and this fic shows us how they cannot really help each other, but that a third party like Phryne can step in and help untangle their complicated web of guilt and sorrow. The solidarity between women, Phryne’s way of being, is what finally provides some kind of comfort for Rosie, who then proceeds to give her testimony in court in a confident and strong manner.

The next group of fics is those where the hurt is coming from the outside, and the comfort is the relationship itself – either given as a part of an established relationship, or the comfort is the very breakthrough and start of the relationship.

Two fics that capture sad, grieving Jack is LadyRoxie‘s [“Bid farewell”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMMay2017/works/11069136) and Sarahtoo‘s [“Fault Lines”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10962285/chapters/24403278). The settings are different – in the first, they are not in a relationship but there are promises of one in the end, in the latter they’re in an established relationship. In the first, Jack learns about the death of a longtime friend, having survival guilt, and in the latter the guilt is acutely present, as a young man under Jack’s command has died. Both explore beautifully how Phryne reacts to a Jack in grief.

In LadyRoxie‘s fic, Phryne telephones since Jack has forgotten they had a rendez-vous:

> When she spoke, her voice seemed to reach through the telephone and stroke his cheek. He bit the inside of it, hard.  
>  “Do you need anything, Jack?”  
>  He willed himself to picture soup and headache powder though her voice suggested other things.  
>  “No.” He swallowed. “Thank you. Goodbye Miss Fisher.”

but Phryne sees through this and comes over: “Why are you here, Miss Fisher. I told you, I’m -” / “I know what you told me, Jack. You’re a terrible liar.”

The fic mirrors some of the ways the show lets Jack take care of Phryne, like the protest against her guilt. In Sarahtoo’s story, Jack is even more wallowing, stricken by guilt, and in his sorrowful and drunk state he feels he is not worthy of anything, definitely not of her, and he takes the blame for people getting killed under his command:

> “Superior officer,” he murmured. “Inferior, more like.” He took another swig of his drink and turned his face away from her.  
>  Phryne took a mouthful of her own whiskey, not knowing quite what to do. Jack’s quiet confidence was so compelling—it had never occurred to her that he had moments like this, where he doubted everything.

But Phryne figures out how to be the comforting figure, cradling him and telling him “I’ve got you. It’s all right.” A night’s sleep is the best remedy. In ”Fault lines,” this is then ending in a real bout of love-making, and Phryne thinking “It was good, she thought as her mind drifted into sleep, that his cracks lined up so perfectly alongside hers.”

adverbally‘s fic [“Sillage”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMMay2017/works/11061930) – her first for MFMM, welcome! – has Phryne as the one hurting and needing their relationship as comfort. A case with domestic violence reminds her a little too much of René and what could have happened if she had stayed with him. Jack comes home to her to check on her, after she disappeared suspiciously quickly from the crime scene, and Phryne compares the two men, seeing how Jack is different, strong without being dominating: "She leaned in and pressed their lips together, relishing the way he relaxed against her and opened his mouth to her. It was moments like these that made her most aware of how unlike René he was. René was all fire and urgency where Jack favored tenderness and sensuality. René kissed as hard as he hit and used his touches to force her into submission. Jack touched her like she was something precious and awe-inspiring and let her guide their love-making."

In whopooh’s [”The Marrying Kind”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMMay2017/works/10865958) the hurt is so small, and the comfort unexpectedly rational for this trope. The hurt is the outside world’s view of Phryne’s and Jack’s relationship, and how Phryne sees this giving Jack problems, so it is rather related to the group of fics I will talk about later on – where the relationship in itself is the hurt. The twist here is that although the relationship is the comfort, it is so in an unexpected way, by denying it to become too ‘conventional’. Phryne attempts to provide comfort by offering to marry Jack, but he says no – not wanting the easy way of making everything right. If the relationship is going to be a comfort or a haven, it has to be in another way, not via the formality of their bond, and not by Phryne offering to give in to a demand he hadn’t even made.

A similar way of holding the most thorough comfort at bay is fromalonglineoftvdetectives [“Head Injuries”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMMay2017/works/10906095) that explores the time when Jack is out cold from the nerve tonic and the blow to his head in “Death Defying Feats”. It is a short scene where Mac comes by to assess the assault victim, and also sees through Phryne and her feelings for the unconscious detective. The comfort is not the relationship per se, but the offered possibility that there might eventually be a relationship, and Mac telling Phryne, from her long-standing friendship, “Let yourself be happy”.

Over to three fics where the burgeoning relationship is the actual comfort.

First flashofthefuse's [“Two’s Company”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10930476/chapters/24314484) that has some real physical hurt – Phryne and Jack have been injured in the job, and while Jack is recuperating, Phryne is simply not waking up after surgery, to Mac’s and Jack’s great worry. Just as in fromalonglineoftvdetectives’s above mentioned fic, Mac is the pillar of reason and loveliness, and also huge amounts of sass. Here it is with Jack she has her conversation. So even if the end point of the fic is comfort from starting the relationship, there is first the very important – equally important – comfort of Mac’s friendship, which is wonderful.

The first chapter is all about Mac and Jack bonding over their joint love for Phryne. Jack refuses to leave her hospital room – “The look he gave her was one of a man that knew he had no secrets and didn’t particularly care.” And they come to a mutual understanding: ”Their eyes met and something passed between them. An understanding that of all the people that knew and loved Phryne Fisher, they were, perhaps, the two that knew and loved her best. Unconditionally.” Then, when Phryne wakes up, Jack retreats, and so the hurt is double – not only the fear for her life (and before that his, since he was injured too), but also the hurt of his withdrawn attention and the insecurity of what their relationship actually is, as well as a call-back to the hurt of “Blood at the Wheel” too – altogether a delicious mix. Phryne realises something of her affections when she sees Jack hurt, but he retreats so much she doesn’t know whether he wants them, which results in a lovely mutual pining. The way she slowly worms her way into knowing this, via a case and with a good help from Mac, is lovely and with a lot of tension.

In missingmissfisher‘s & Comeaftermejackrobinson’s [“Of hope also one lives”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10876533/chapters/24164448) (not yet completed) there is also a real physical hurt. Jack has lost his memory after being hurt on the job, and his mind has decided that he is Archie Jones, and that Phryne – Fern – is his wife. Phryne thus finds herself in a situation where she must play wife to Archie Jones while worrying whether Jack will ever come back to his right mind again. The hurt is extra tangible because they had just been on the brink of starting something – Phryne had invited Jack to dinner, when he had to enter into the raid and was hurt. First, Phryne is fearing for his life, remembering her time in the war, then she has the scare of him not knowing who he is, and then small snippets of him coming back. As the fic is not finished, we’ll have to see how the comfort part will play out. 

In RositaLG’s [“Chasing Shadow”, chapter 9](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7691389/chapters/24040974) of "The Friday Phrack Series", we are given a new ending to “King Memse’s Curse”. The hurt that permeates the fic is the close call that was Phryne’s dealings with Murdoch Foyle and that Jack acutely feels: "All night long, he’d stood along the fringes of the party observing, quietly acknowledging that all of this might have been lost if Phryne had been allowed to let herself die at the hands of Murdoch Foyle." This night, after all this has happened, when she asks he cannot say no: “If it were any other day, he might have been stronger. Any other day, her touch, her eyes might not have broken him. But here, on this night, standing in her parlor, he didn’t have the will to deny her.”

Then, we move on to the really hurtful things: hurt that comes not from outside, and is not physical, but emotional and from the relationship itself: their differences, doubts, and the way they can hurt each other – particularly the problem of holding fast or letting go.

The first one is Sassasam’s [“Goodbye Hello”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10894815/chapters/24215781). This is a kind of melancholy diptych, like two ‘still lives’ of Jack and Phryne respectively, alone, contemplating the relationship and what they might be heading towards, while the other one is asleep beside them. There is something serene in these two nights, and their symmetries and asymmetries say as much as possible of the respective character. First it is their last night, the night before Phryne is flying to England with her father, and Jack thinking about perhaps losing her. Then it is their first night, after reuniting, and Phryne thinking about perhaps staying with him. They both need to understand what might be their biggest fears, emotionally, while thinking about the other’s personality as well as physicality, as s/he is sleeping just beside them. The longing, the fear, the love – all very beautiful. Jack, the last night, wants her to stay but is letting her go, and he notices he has left a mark on her neck: "He’d marked her, branded her, wanted the world to see that for one shining moment she had been his and his alone. He imagined her waking in the morning to find the mark, winding a scarf about her throat to hide it but still, knowing it was there. And for a few days hence, she would carry his mark with her and remember Jack Robinson."

There is a slight hopelessness to Jack, and he has difficulties aligning what has happened with that: "And so they’d had their gaudy night. Or at least that’s what he’d told himself it would be. One night of passion and possession. One night and then he’d let her go. /But he hadn’t expected her to love him back." Phryne, in chapter 2, is watching Jack and thinking about “the way her body responded to his every touch, ignited with a passion and longing for closeness that she’d thought long gone in her.”

In ollyjay's [“Old Habits Die Hard”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10958616/chapters/24392952) Phryne and Jack have trouble adjusting to a life together; as the title says, habits and ways of behaving are hard to change, and in some ways, they are very different people. They don’t manage to speak (yes, this would be an excellent contribution also to the Miscommunication trope) about their needs, especially as they hardly see each other, but keep different times and more or less communicate through notes and absences. What starts as a generosity – to let the other do their thing, and that is something that is so much Phryne and Jack – instead develops into a nagging doubt that the other might not want them anymore, small snippets of un-generosity slipping in at the hurtful feeling of that. There is a fine line between letting the other make his or her decisions and not seeming to care, and that is really explored by this fic, all from Phryne’s perspective. The questions she asks are legitimate and hard: "Christ, did they even have enough in common to be in a relationship? Come to that, what did she know of relationships anyway?” And then the comfort, them actually talking and understanding each other, is a wonderful oasis just when you thought you would choke on all that desert sand.

In whopooh’s [”Retreat Is Impossible”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10947771/chapters/24363144) it is again their differences that are the problem, and the idea that one of the things Phryne loves about Jack is what makes it impossible for her to have him: “She had come to count on Jack to do the right thing, to resist her, to jokingly lock eyes with her but to not take any of her suggestions seriously.” When Jack at one point ceases to resist Phryne and gives in to her flirtations, kissing her, she realises this problem. Phryne rejects him, and a hurt Jack has to come to terms with what happened. This is a Jack that knows how to keep his emotions in check, knowing that he cannot force Phryne into something, and knowing that it isn’t fair either to call her fickle or cruel. “I know I cannot make you love me,” he says to her, and promises that he won’t disappear on her again, the way he did after the car crash. His repressed pain is rather palpable, and when the comfort comes, it’s from Phryne realising that she does want him fully, a realisation she can only have because he didn’t pressure her or tried to force her hand.

Finally, there are two wonderful fics that scrutinize the trope through joking with it and ideas about trust, betrayal, hurt, and comfort. Kid_n_the_hall's [“Breakfast in bed”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMMay2017/works/10890645) is a wonderful romp where Jack is upset that Phryne has finished all his favourite cereal, a type of food she doesn’t even like, and he challenges her about this betrayal:

> ”I thought I could trust you. I asked for one thing!”  
>  ”I don’t…”  
>  ”One thing! And behind my back? All you had to do was ask first!”  
>  ”You don’t feel like you’re overreacting just a bit?”

Apart from joking with the hurt/comfort trope, the fic also has a glorious take on Jack’s liberal man-talk: ”I need to make something perfectly clear, Phryne. You know I’m a generous man, maybe not as generous or sharing as you’d like me to be or as much as I would like me to be. For you. But I don’t want you to think that my breakfast cereal is like all the other food.” To which Phryne can of course only react in one way: ”What other food?” And once the hurting is finished, there is plenty of comfort taking place through the specific delights of the relationship.

The final fic is olderbynow‘s [“A Shortage of Sympathy”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMMay2017/works/11009367), where Phryne is portrayed as rather “cruel”, not being very sympathetic to a Jack in pain. This might seem harsh, especially the way olderbynow teases us in her way of writing it, an impression that lasts until we realise what his pain is about.

> He looked very much like she ought to expect to be breaking in a new detective inspector in the near future because her current one wouldn’t be around much longer.  
>  She nearly felt sorry for him. But not quite. “Come on, Jack. It wasn’t that bad.”

Then the fic explores what the pain is about – let’s not give it all away, but just say that this fic too is food related. Phryne teasing Jack is wonderful, as well as the way he manages to almost – but only almost – give as good as he takes. The dialogue and both of them attempting to win over the other just glitters and sparkles all the way to the natural conclusion: that Jack has found a new thing he dislikes almost as much as operetta.

And on that light and lovely note, this trope overview is done, and there is nothing more for us than to look forward to the June trope “undercover”.


	6. Undercover or under the covers? The June trope challenge

June was the month for undercover, and this trope opens up for a broad range of possibilities – all the way from creating a whole case to sketching a teasing undercover attempt mostly to make Phryne and Jack get together in a specific way. Often, the two layers of the roles and themselves comment on each other in meaningful ways, and within this, the undercover scenarios – worlds to immerse in, roles to play – are more or less limitless, and also really tickles the imagination.

Compared to the other months, this month’s fics ran away and got rather long, and also published late in the month – so what first looked like an ‘easy’ month for me to write an overview for instead in the end became really fic heavy. This is also a trope that has already been extensively (under)covered in earlier fics – also there not seldom long ones. To just name a few, we have lovely longfics like S_Winter_Fitzgerald’s [“Undercover at the Elvsworth Club“](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2464343/chapters/5463881), Sassasam’s [“The Model Murders”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3405629/chapters/7455512); PlayfulMay's [”Undercover Escort”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4871278/chapters/11166847); Fire_Sign's [“The Uses of Adversity”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9282800/chapters/21037139); missingmissfisher‘s series [“Double o Phrack”](http://archiveofourown.org/series/684702); and two lovely and rather different undercover fics with a cycling theme: Miss_Lilian’s [“Death at the Warrny”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5134931/chapters/11815979) and hotelf’s [“Murder at the Cycling Club”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8368123/chapters/19168633) – just to name some of the longer ones. Undercover truly is a popular trope.

But this post is about the trope challenge [(the full collection can be found here)](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMJune2017), so we’ll concentrate on the fics from June. In most stories, it’s either Phryne, Jack, or both of them going undercover, and the focus is on their relationship and the case. A few fics are broadening that focus, which is really lovely. I will start with them, to then go on to the lighthearted fics, the smuttier fics, and finally end with the longer cases.

In flashofthefuse, [“The Red Flame”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11357625/chapters/25421217), there are two different undercover operations that unbeknownst to each other are set in the same place, a club/brothel. When Jack is in need for a woman to go undercover and pose as a criminal, the title’s red flame, he asks Mac – although it takes a little while for the reader to realise this, and it’s deliciously done. At the same time, Phryne has a case and makes her undercover work with Bert.

The repartee between Mac and Jack is glorious, like here:

> “… you definitely look the part, but just looking like her won’t be enough, you know. Are you as confident in her character? I hope you took the time to read the material I sent.”  
>  “Are you always this condescending?”  
>  “Probably,” he admitted, earning him a small smile. “May I come in? I’d like to fill you in on what we’ve learned this afternoon.”

The story isn’t finished yet, but it’s lovely in more than one way to see the interactions both within and between these two pairings – having their own very difficult mission, but also worrying about the others’. We often say that we want more interaction between Mac and Jack, and here that is given in a brilliant way, with sincere care and respect as well as banter – and also with a Mac that is a genius in playing a tough, nonchalant role undercover, using her experience of being a woman in a man’s world in a way that helps the case enormously.

RubyCaspar’s [“And after all the obstacles”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11399673) gives us a fic all from Rosie’s point-of-view. Even if it is Phryne and Jack that are undercover, the person we follow here is Rosie, being at a garden party and suddenly encountering Jack, who turns out to be undercover together with Phryne. We see all the action and scenes from her point of view, and the case part of the fic is thus brilliantly shortened. RubyCaspar gives us Rosie’s view and her observations and conclusions of what she sees – conclusions she constantly needs to revise, as more and more is revealed to her about Phryne and Jack. This also gives her the chance to work through her feelings about her ex-husband. It is set almost a year after “Unnatural habits”, and gives a strong and determined Rosie – “Rosie thought about avoiding him, but she wasn’t one to back down. If he didn’t want to see her, he could leave. With that in mind, she straightened her shoulders and made her way over” – and a Rosie ready to change her preconceptions. It’s a very hopeful story.

In fromaLongLineofTVDetectives‘s [“Incognito”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11265975/chapters/25190892), finally, Jack is the one going “undercover”, but his undercover interplay is with Aunt Prudence. Aunt P is ill and needs to travel to England, and it turns out that she needs Jack to accompany her, thus forcing him to pretend to be her niece’s husband. With small gestures, the fic teases out many emotions, details and characterisations, in snippets covering many issues and building up a story about Phryne and Jack, about Phryne in relation to her family in England, and also about not hiding who you are (a second take on the theme ‘undercover’). Like this discussion about Oscar Wilde:

> “Dragged out of his room by the police and sentenced to hard labor.”  
>  “For…, um…” Jack stammered, unsure what euphemism was appropriate for the dining room of the establishment in question.  
>  “For refusing to live his entire life undercover,” Phryne responded, her voice now clear and defiant. “For loving who he wanted to love. For not hiding or apologizing for who he was.”  
>  Jack smiled and held her gaze. He loved her like this. He would have kissed her, soundly, if they weren’t in public.  
>  “So the Wilde play, then,” he said matter-of-factly, after a long beat.

After these alternative perspectives, I’ll turn to the rather large section of fics that are fun and light hearted and sometimes also have a… shall we say more liberal view of what ”undercover” can mean.

The perfect transition between these two sections are of course OllyJay‘s [“The Inspector”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMJune2017/works/11316975), a fic that focuses on Isabella, the rather scandalous wife of Phryne’s cousin Guy, and has a delightful touch on the subject of both her and the theme of ‘undercover’. The two spouses have a conversation worthy of British toffs, discussing a news item about Phryne getting married, while simultaneously devoting themselves to both rather ‘dirty’ and casual carnal pleasures.

Isabella’s logic turns the tables on the “propriety issue” we often consider with respect to Phryne and her life style in contrast to Jack: “Really, it is quite wrong of your cousin. A divorced policeman? Why can’t she just keep sleeping with him? I mean, what will people say?"’ It’s a brilliant turnaround. Reassured that this won’t affect her, she instead turns to daydream about the handsome and dour Inspector, something Guy doesn’t mind helping her out with through some roleplaying.

Isabella’s and Guy’s way of seeing everything as a game, of indulging in fantasies, and of having other people in bed with them – both physically and in role play – is all very in character, and an interesting contrast to Phryne.

The next lighthearted fic is loopyhoopyfrood’s sweet modern AU [“Love At First Swipe?”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11408733), where Jack Robinson is being set up for a date on an app as part of a case. He needs to find out how burglaries seem to have been conducted in relation to dates set up via this app; his only problem is that when he meets his date, it is not a suspicious stranger but a lady detective working on the same case.

> Maybe it was her profile, as full as lies as every other user, but missing that hint of authenticity. Or maybe it was just Jack’s spidey senses tingling. Either way, something about Fern Roberts had him groaning in resignation and swiping right.  
>  20 minutes later he had a date.  
>  He tried not to think about how it was his first date since his divorce.

As a [chapter 11](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7691389/chapters/25633797) in her longer fic collection, “The Friday Phrack Series, rositalg writes an intimate and atmospheric scene from Phryne and Jack in an established relationship. Phryne comes home to a Jack that sits and reads, and she simultaneously talks about her case and is seduced by him.

> Her eyes closed blissfully, relishing in the attention.  
>  “Perhaps you could help me.” She suggested, her thighs parting ever so subtly. “You’ve always been one to…dive deep into a case.”  
>  He met her eyes, both of them knowing he was going to have her right here on this couch before the evening was done.  
>  “Miss Fisher, are you asking me for assistance?”

In Sarahtoo's [“Under Cover of Darkness”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMJune2017/works/11301990), both the ‘undercover’ and the ‘under the cover’ theme is at play. Phryne and Jack has spent the evening undercover in a club, and the fic starts after this is over. Everything goes black, and when Phryne wakes up, she is in a strange room. After the first moments of fear, she deduces that she is not kidnapped but rather at Jack’s house, with a Detective Inspector sleeping in the chair next to her. The fic then turns to her instead indulging in pleasures under the covers with her crime solving partner, and it’s combined with really lovely banter:

> “You, Jack Robinson,” she breathed, around sweeps of her tongue across his cheeks, “have a very talented mouth.”  
>  “It’s entirely the subject, Miss Fisher,” he responded, his smile a smug tilt of the lips.

And in the end:

> Catching her hand, he leaned up to kiss her, his smile tender. “You are an excellent partner, Miss Fisher. I enjoy working with you, undercover or not.”  
>  “That’s because I’m exceptional.” Phryne grinned as she said it.  
>  “And so modest, too!” Jack affected surprise. “A prize among women.”

Equally of the fun and teasing persuasion is Fire_Sign′s [“Subterfuge at the Savoy”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMJune2017/works/11308710) that establishes a gorgeous scene of Phryne in bed in a hotel in England – just to suddenly have her mother barge in without warning (of course Phryne Fisher’s mother is resourseful…). In the heat of the moment, Phryne decides to keep Jack hidden under the covers, but he is in a devilish mood and starts touching her and making her behave exceedingly oddly towards her mother.

> “You aren’t still pouting over that policeman your father mentioned, are you? He said you told the poor man to come after you, which is utterly foolish.”  
>  The policeman in question was drifting dangerously high up her thigh with his tongue, and Phryne really had no idea how much longer she could keep this charade up.

Among all the fun, there is also a partly serious question from Jack, after Phryne’s mother has left: ‘“Why was it, Miss Fisher, that we are two consenting, independent adults and I still found myself hiding from your mother?” he asked, eyes dancing. “You’re not ashamed of me, are you?”’

But Phryne has an answer to that question, too.

A last lighthearted undercover fic is leavephryneforme’s [“Undercover At The Great Australian Baking Show”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11303913/chapters/25294176) – a fun romp told in small snippets about a modern Jack being undercover on a baking show. He decides to keep this a secret to Phryne, who starts wondering why he suddenly has so many cookbooks, and the fic addresses his far too alluring features – which the female judges appreciate – when baking.

From lighthearted, we’ll turn to two fics that focus on putting Jack in costume.

whopooh’s [“The Importance of Being at the Wilde Cats Club”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11067105/chapters/24679494), is a case fic where the focus is not so much on the case, but more on the characters. In order to help Phryne’s old friend Eleanore, who is also a transwoman, Jack, Hugh, Bert and Cec need to go undercover at a club as men impersonating women. The fic focuses on the transformation of them – how they will need to dress, and move, and wear make-up – and also in Phryne’s complete delight in dressing up and putting make-up on Jack, and the shenanigans that follow from this, where Jack uses his newly painted lips to tease Phryne. There is both trust and teasing all through, and a slight continuation of the role reversal theme of April. It all came from two things: the comment “We need more mfmm men in lingerie”, and the desire to have a transgender person who would not need to die in order to be important in a case story. This turned into seduction via lipstick:

> She pressed her lips together and motioned how he should do the same and he followed her lead, pushing his lips together. She smiled, and he followed her lead in that too.  
>  “Oh, hang on,” she said, and procured a piece of paper. “Bite the excess colour off on this one, like this.”

But instead of doing that, Jack captures her and kisses her deeply, smudging the lipstick:

> "When they resurfaced, she looked at him and couldn’t stop a smile from spreading over her face. He looked ridiculous, with the lipstick smudged and forming a mad pattern around his mouth. / “Well, you should see yourself,” was all he said as he gave her a small smile."

Also in scruggzi’s [“Merciful Powers”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMJune2017/works/11358033), there is a focus on Jack in costume – this time in a luscious costume for going undercover as an understudy in a Macbeth production. Phryne takes great pleasure in the fact that he is dressed in tights, and that he also can be extricated from said tights, and there is a wonderful use of Shakespeare quotes as seduction throughout the fic. As the whole undercover trope shows, it is very fulfilling to put Jack in other clothes than his normal ones, while still keeping his restrained character, and here it is combined by a delicious push-and-pull between them: ‘“Mmm,” she purred, “much as I applaud your theatrical talent, Jack, that was definitely better than Shakespeare.”/ “Sacrilege!” he protested in mock horror, eyes twinkling at her.’

And heading into smut, there is a lovely self-awareness of the literary, and the way it comments on the two of them:

> “Macbeth always knew he couldn’t resist temptation forever. All he really needed was an excuse.”  
>  Phryne was fairly sure that analysis had very little to do with Shakespeare, but Jack’s hands had moved around to palm her breasts, and his lips had found the spot just under her ear that made her knees weak. Literary criticism could definitely wait.

The undercover work, and its implications of dressing differently than normal, and of perhaps partly trying out being someone else, is driving the sensual pleasure here.

A similar thing can be said about Sassasam’s [“The Captain’s In”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMJune2017/works/11357076). Here Phryne and Jack are both working undercover on the same case, or rather, Jack is working undercover and a stubborn Phryne stumbles into his case. As they’re thrown together, Phryne having to pretend to be a prostitute, the undercover turns into rather rough sexual roleplay (‘"Get below and get naked,” he ordered. / Phryne realised with a rush of aroused surprise, that he meant it and she must obey in order to maintain their cover’), and also here there is the idea of heightening an experience through unfamiliar roles and costumes – in this case more ‘dirty’, and added to it a rather sinister on-looker.

Over to the long, more elaborate case fics. First, fromaLongLineofTVDetectives' [“Welcome to San Francisco”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11038377/chapters/24604254), as the title gives away, set in the US where Phryne and Jack have taken a detour on their way home to Australia. In San Francisco they happen upon Lin Chung, who’s in need of their help. The stakes are high – Lin is threatened to his life – and it turns out that Jack will have to pretend to be Baron Fisher, while Phryne poses as Lin’s wife. In a lovely and similar way as the show, the storyline shows some of Phryne’s and Jack’s emotional journeys, but without settling anything too much, still leaving many questions unanswered. Their relation and the case is woven together, and there is a lovely relation between Jack and a young lad he takes in under his tutelage; an interesting triangle between Phryne, Jack and Lin; an outsider view disapproving of the Chinese man that they handle brilliantly; and a very competent pair of detectives.

There are many poignant points, often made through dialogue, like here:

> “Are you and Inspector Robinson in San Francisco on a case?” Lin asked.  
>  “Not exactly,” Phryne replied. “You might say our relationship is no longer strictly business.”  
>  “I see,” Lin answered. “Are you happy?”  
>  “Very much so,” Phryne replied without hesitation.  
>  “Should I still refer to you as Miss Fisher?”  
>  “Yes.”  
>  “Then there must be more to Inspector Robinson than I had originally perceived,” he concluded.

A fic that teases out an emotional side of Phryne and Jack’s partnership, and of Phryne’s backstory, is Sarahtoo's [”Ungentle Reminders”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMJune2017/works/11217363). The undercover stint in this story awakens memories of René in Phryne, and it also higlights misogyny and abuse. Phryne is unsettled by the happenings, where she has to pretend to be a subdued woman among other subdued women, and after the women unexpectedly has made a bloody rebellion, she states: 

> “I’ll be a character witness for them,” Phryne said, her eyes on his face as he swept the cloth gently across her skin, wiping up the residue he’d left behind. His eyes flashed up to hers, surprised.  
>  “You only knew them for a couple of days,” he said.  
>  “Maybe,” she agreed, “but Jack, I was them, once upon a time.”

And Jack agrees about the woman who’s now going to be charged for murder: “She made her own freedom.”

In Inzannatea’s [“Things Said”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11303865/chapters/25294017) (her first mfmm fic – welcome!) the theme is also rather sinister: Jack is, on his way to London and Phryne, kidnapped in Egypt and taken by slave traders. The theme is serious and the case is given plenty of focus, building up the world where Phryne can be in place to save him – but there is also plenty of focus on more carnal pleasures, once Jack is finally released and still in her tent, as well as luscious details, like here, before Jack has realised who is his saviour: ‘The room had an amber glow to it. Jack couldn’t really tell where the lights were coming from, but the room decidedly glowed. The floor was covered with stacks of ornate rugs and large pillows in shades of orange and red and purple. “She would love this,” his traitorous brain informed him instead of working on an escape plan.' The fic grew out of the line “Shave him and bring him to my tent” – and from that start an elaborate story was built.

A casefic that has both dinosaurs, archaeological sites, a friend of Phryne with interesting parallels to her and the inspired idea to let Phryne and Jack pose undercover as siblings, is Fire_Sign's [“Poetry of Earth”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11352783/chapters/25408665). 

Phryne and Jack arrive at the scene of an archaeological dig on Isle of Wight, where a clever female archaeologist, Lucy, that is a friend of Phryne’s works. There seems to be sabotage and ill will, and Lucy is particularly putting her neck out as a female archaeologist. There is a young girl that tries to flirt with the handsome brother in the newly arrived sibling pair, and there is a lot of tension and fun scenes as Phryne and Jack must take care not to seem to close for siblings. 

> “Hence travelling as Frances and John Sutherland, amateur Australian archaeologists without the financial resources to make a name for themselves,” Jack concluded. “How fortunate then that I’ve decided to bone up on my childhood interests while here.”  
>  Phryne looked at him, noting the small hints of a smug smile on his face.  
>  “You know, Jack, one would almost think the pun was deliberate.”  
>  “Thankfully you know my tastes are far too refined for puns,” he replied and she laughed at the glint in his eyes.

And there is a wonderful passage that comments on their earlier case at the observatorium, and that reflects on Phryne being rather alike her friend Lucy, who once almost got stuck in a flood because she was so focused on her work:

> “That was careless of Lucy.”  
>  Jack quirked a small smile. “She was distracted by a nearly complete skeleton they were uncovering. I cannot imagine what it would be like, working with someone so easily deterred by bones or luminescent objects.”  
>  “If this is about the plutonium vial, I stand by my choices.”  
>  He didn’t reply, merely smirked at a point well made; she glanced down the empty beach and then leant up to kiss his cheek.

At the same time as Phryne is standing by her choices, she is also all the time noticing how close she’s come to Jack, and contemplating on that sense of familiarity, all while not allowed to show any feelings for him openly.

In one last finished casefic, OllyJay & solitarycyclist have ganged up on a case fic with plenty of tension between Phryne and Jack, [“Death Under the Arch”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11375937/chapters/25469340). Here, Jack is going to Sydney for an undercover stint and leaves City South to a very handsome and eligible Inspector – Phryne, however, decides to join him in Sydney. The story is set after "Murder and Mozzarella", right after they have said they’ll “make do” with each other, but before they have figured out what that actually means, which opens up for insecurities and misinterpretations on both sides. The mystery is set around the bridge that is being built in Sydney, and Phryne decides to play Jack’s ex-lover as a way to be able to keep watching him:

> She leaned towards him, face alight with mischief, “I was thinking it could be fun if we were old friends.”  
>  Jack almost laughed, how typical, only he would manage to go from strictly business to old friend without any of the fun in-between.

There is also a very perceptive young woman who tries to figure the two of them out, which adds to the mix of tensions and uncertainties, and a murder mystery that turns rather sad.

Finally, the section of “To be continued”: two fics that are not finished so I’ll only write shortly about them. In missingmissfisher’s [“Hold out your hand”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11381922/chapters/25484859), Jack has come after Phryne to England and meets her mother that instinctively dislikes him. It seems Margaret wants to stop her daughter from repeating her own mistakes by marrying an unsuitable man, and Margaret is something of Phryne’s kryptonite, so much annoying her that Phryne has troubles thinking straight. Added to the mix are snobbish and boring neighbours and a small mystery that turns into a much bigger and more serious one – and how that will unfold we’ll see rather soon. 221aubrina started [“The Case of the Missing Moll”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11320272/chapters/25337805), which promises to cover both the tropes undercover and bodyswap, and has just taken its beginning – so far, we only now that Jack has been drugged and taken away somewhere… 

That’s all for June from me. I am very much looking forward to the July fics, on the trope “Through time and space”! [(see the challenge here - they're open for anyone feeling like joining)](http://firesign23.tumblr.com/post/162480517712/mfmm-year-of-tropes-july-challenge)

***

PS.

As several comments were happy that I included also older fics, I’ll add some more! In the original post I settled for only long fics, but there are lovely short undercover fics too, and here are some of them: abluestocking, [“Under a Summer Sky”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1090448); Sarahtoo, ["The Bodies at the Blue Bird"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8484799/chapters/19443634) ; Sassasam’s [“All the Fun of the Fair”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2388518), CollingwoodGirl, [“What Shall Change Slander to Remorse”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6089848); youspeakmysoul, [“reaching a fever pitch”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7238029) and GaslightGallows‘ “["And I Do Lift My Aching Arms to You"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5660701). 


	7. Miss Fisher going out of space and time – the July trope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The July trope "Out of Space and Time".

July has passed – I know, some time ago, I’m getting slower and slower at this – and we’ve had another wonderful wave of fics emerging from one trope. This time the topic was “Out of Space and Time” – a trope that encourages writers to think outside the box and allow their favourite characters to meet things not usually in their own fictional universe.

This month proves there is no shortage of imagination in this fandom. It has been a joy to see how the trope has been interpreted. Much like earlier tropes like “soulmate AU” and “body swap,” it makes the writers take the story in surprising directions. And just as good tropes work, it not only allows for the surprising takes, but also for more ‘normal’ fics, using the prompt in a more literal way.

’ll start with the ones closer to the Miss Fisher normalcy, then jump to a fic set in another time setting. After that I’ll discuss cases of the supernatural or stories where history can be changed, and finally turn to fics that are crossovers and incorporate other fictional universes that somehow challenge our concepts of time and space [(the full collection can be found here)](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMJuly2017/works).

 

First, the fics that focus more on the “time and space” part than the “out of” part of the prompt.

Here we have rositalg's lovely [“Presumptuous”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11481141/chapters/25748034), that gives us a great view of Phryne’s mother meddling in her daughter’s life. Phryne has no idea that Jack has gone after her until he’s suddenly there in London, and she reacts rather violently:

> “I believe you know the Inspector?”  
>  “I apologize for the delay, Miss Fisher.” He smiled at her stunned face. “But the only pilot I knew was already booked for England so I had to take the long way around.” He explained.  
>  She stared at him, her hands shaking, before looking towards her mother for confirmation of what she was seeing. When she turned back to him, her shock gave way to incense at seeing his smile and before he could comment on the change, she reached out and slapped him across the cheek.  
>  “Phryne!” Her mother cried out, scandalized.  
>  Jack held up his hand to quiet the older Fisher. There’d been no heart in the weak attack; in fact, he’d barely felt it.  
>  “Six weeks!?” She cried, jabbing the words at him like a dagger.

The fic gives us a Jack that presumes a little more than usual when he goes out of his own space, Australia, to go after Phryne, and then a Phryne perhaps presuming more than usual, and then a wonderful conversation where time is out of joint. Phryne has been sending Jack letters and telegrams that he didn’t receive because he was travelling, and once he comes home, he decides to answer every one of them, as detailed as they are delayed. This forms the basis of a delicious scene where a suggestive letter from Phryne receives a welcoming answer from Jack – and is then immediately acted out. 

whopooh's [“Time and distance, time and closeness”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMJuly2017/works/11532027) is a take on an established relationship between the detectives in the longer run, where Phryne is committed, but also doesn’t cease to be an adventuress and a traveller. The story focuses on both the longing and the joy of reunion, and how this balance plays out in their life with small farewells and small reunions.

> “You really are rather good at this, Inspector,” she said, looking at him curiously. Her voice had an edge, as if she was a tiny bit offended.  
>  “Would you rather I rotted away here on my own?”  
>  She sized him up for a moment and moved closer to touch his arm.  
>  “Perhaps a tiny bit of decay, just on your outer edges?” she suggested.  
>  He laughed as he dragged her into his lap.

fromaLongLineofTVDetectives‘ [“The Right Time”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11482434/chapters/25751982) is an intimate, low-key fic where Phryne and Jack discuss their relationship after having been together for a year, with the theme of when the right time for something is. There is tension building from Phryne’s simple question of why he decided on her the specific night that he did, and the doubt from how Jack answers it. Here are beautiful lines like “There was a part of him that believed it was that simple. But the romantic Jack still warred with Jack-the-realist, Jack-the-experienced – the Jack that knew that even the simplest and most pure of loves couldn’t always withstand the buffeting winds.”

And in response to the night at Concetta’s, when Concetta said his heart was taken:

> “And you didn’t want your heart to be taken,” Phryne said gently.
> 
> “No, that’s not what I mean.” he responded. “There was a time it was true. An earlier time. A time when I thought my heart had run leaps and bounds ahead of me and I had no choice in the matter.” Jack’s smile grew boyish and joyful. Phryne laughed and matched his smile effortlessly.
> 
> “But by that night, I knew I loved you,” he said. “I wanted to love you. I chose to love you. But I still didn’t know how…” he gestured between them, to their position together on the chaise, and their joined hands. “I didn’t know how we were going to do this.”

And in fromaLongLineofTVDetectives’ second story, [“Space”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11403336/chapters/25541529), the writer has made use of “space” as a prompt by writing snippets where she uses different meanings of the word. Phryne is going away and Jack isn’t that happy with it: “I can’t bear for you to leave me,” he said with a laugh, his voice teasing, but his eyes, his body, suggesting that his lightheartedness was flimsy cover for the depth of his real feeling.” The play on different kinds of spaces, and of Jack retreating and not being sure if he can handle a relationship with Phryne, is all delicately done, ending with his promise that he’ll get better at this, with time.

rositalg's, [“Time and space”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7627318/chapters/26032191), chapter 8 of “War Stories” is a lovely short take on Phryne being overwhelmed when she sees an abuse victim that takes her back to her own experiences from Paris. This is Phryne and Jack within canon, not (yet?) in a relationship, and Jack recognizes something of what she’s feeling:

> “Melbourne, 1929.” He offered.  
>  “I’m sorry?” She gave him a quizzical look.  
>  “When I forget where I am, I try to focus on the differences between then and now: sunny skies, clean air, thick grass underfoot, Inspector Jack Robinson,” he added with a smile as he touched his own chest. “You’re in Melbourne, 1929.”  
>  Phryne searched him carefully.  
>  _You’re safe with me_ , his eyes told her, even when his mouth couldn’t.

And later, when Jack talks about how she’s inspiring because she’s been through a lot and is so alive:

> “It inspired me.” He confessed. “Do you remember when you told me that you hadn’t taken anything seriously since 1918?"  
>  "Oh, I was flirting with you, Jack.” She rolled her eyes, not taking her statement seriously either.  
>  “Even so,” he smiled at her.

Geenee27's [“Two Roads Diverged”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11665221/chapters/26249982) is a lovely take on how things could have been very different. It tells of Jack Robinson making his last day at City South, about to be transferred to Sydney, and the piece is filled with such melancholy about this change in his life, and gives a beautiful character study of Jack right before he meets Miss Fisher. He says good bye to the new, promising constable Collins: "Jack did not have many regrets, but he had looked forward to mentoring this young constable. He was very green to be sure, but he was intelligent, dedicated to the work and empathetic to the people who needed their help. He would make a good officer. / Jack extended his arm and they shook hands goodbye. Then Jack lifted the box and walked determinedly out of the door. He did not look back but walked to his motorcar, placed the cardboard carton in the back seat and slid into the driver’s seat."

Just as he is about to drive away from the station, he is called back to investigate at the Andrew’s house. As the title suggests, this is a real divergence of roads: either he goes to Sydney and never gets to know Phryne, or he stays in Melbourne. What he chooses here, you’ll have to read for yourselves.

The trope of space and time can also be interpreted as prompting and AU in another time, but this was not so much taken up on – maybe we already have a fair amount of AUs from other times and modern times, or maybe this just wasn’t the typical association to the trope. One fic that created another time for Phryne and Jack is heavyheadedgal's [“The Heiress’ Tale”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMJuly2017/works/11501751), set in the 12th century England, where Phryne is a Baron’s daughter setting out to escape from an arranged wedding. She’s aiming for protection from one side of the civil war, or “At the very least, her disobedience might put her betrothed off the idea of marrying her altogether.” She buys the help from a steadfast retired knight of the name Sir John Robinson: “If she can get to Bristol, her aunt, the Lady Prudence (no friend of the Baron’s), will give her refuge. The problem is getting there, quickly, without discovery.” The fic is written as a one-shot, but it really sets the scene for further fun, and since so many asked for a continuation in the comments, I wonder if it might get a continuation.

When the trope goes in the direction of the supernatural or of the possibility to change history it easily becomes a contemplation of love, loss, and what is important in life. It’s probably not surprising that several of the fics turned in rather sad directions.

Sassasam's [“The Nearness of You”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11576922/chapters/26014161) explores the idea that Jack died when travelling after Phryne, but he stayed as a ghost and when a young relative to Phryne moves into Wardlow, she’s the only one who can see him.

> “How did you get in here?” she asked as tersely as she could manage.  
>  “I’ve been here for quite some time,” he answered.  
>  “Well that’s impossible. This is my house and you’re trespassing. If you don’t leave I’ll be forced to call the police.”  
>  He chuckled ruefully. “In my day, I was the police,” he said, voice gruff and low. “Don’t you remember me.”

In this storyline, Phryne lived her whole life to an old age without Jack, and without having either had the chance to get together with him or say goodbye; and Jack, is haunting a house where no one can see him for 90 years. The young Phryne learns more and more about Phryne Fisher, reading her diaries and listening to the ghost, and she starts to dream about Phryne and Jack – or is she perhaps remembering? The fic explores this very sad ending to the love story of Phryne and Jack, an alternate ending that works to show the power of the two of them together. It makes the young Phryne, who like us is experiencing the story as an onlooker, the possible saviour of them by what she can read and learn, and also by how she can relive it.

Another interesting – and exceedingly sad – exploration of how history can be changed is Fire_Sign's [“Like Juno’s Swans”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMJuly2017/works/11568027). In this story, Phryne is allowed to travel back in time and decides to revisit her youth to try to save Janey. It’s not easy to find a way to make Murdoch Foyle be arrested before Janey is kidnapped, but Phryne is doing fairly well – until she meets the young constable Jack Robinson and he gets involved. Jack is both the same and not at all – still young, inexperienced and a newlywed, but with plenty of quirks the same, and Phryne comparing the young man to the older:

> “How did you know I was married?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.  
>  “I can always tell,” Phryne bluffed, then smirked. “And Samuels mentioned it in passing.”  
>  Jack chuckled, more easily than her Jack did but the same tone. “I suppose I should get used to gossip,” he said.  
>  _Darling, you have no idea_ , she thought, but merely smiled.

The irony of the story is that Phryne doesn’t have very much idea herself about what messing with time means. She manages to save Janey, but at an enormous price – where she changes both her own and other’s lives so much we can’t even be sure how much of “our” Phryne is actually left. It is beautifully done but also heart breaking.

Inzannatea, [“Different Destinations”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMJuly2017/works/11429916) has an idea that is also at the same time clever and rather sad – that some people are reliving their lives, again and again, changing small things in it so there are different life courses, and that Phryne is one of them. Every time, things change: for example, the first time around, Phryne had a husband, Pascal, but in her later reruns, he was never even born. And in no lifetime did Phryne manage to save Janey. Again, there is much sadness and thoughts about life and how to live it here. The fic explores the whole idea via a lovely dialogue between Phryne and another man that turns out to know everything about this, the all-knowing Mr Butler – there is a reason he is so all-knowing. He also encourages her to dare to love no matter this curse of repretition:

> Phryne tried to process what she was hearing from the man. “This is my third time. I’m not sure what has been hardest, losing Janey each time or the wars.” She finally said softly.  
>  Mr. Butler considered her, “It’s always the closer things that hurt the worst for me in the long run,” his eyes filled with moisture, then he smiled, “but they also make the journey worth bearing.”

Also Ollyjay [“Au Revoir”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11655240/chapters/26223057) explores the pain of time travel and repetition, in a slightly different – but equally clever and devastating – manner.

Here, Jack is about to be killed in a fire when Phryne – not his Phryne, but a Phryne from the future – pops in through the ceiling and throws him back in time so he can relive his last day, again and again. Every time, he and she has learned something from the last time, and he uses this knowledge to change things while she is trying to save him. There are so many clever things here: their conversations when Jack is almost suffocating and first not sure that he’s not hallucinating; the way Jack tries to make it difficult for Phryne to find him in order to save her, while she’s trying to save him; the way Phryne has worked so hard in the future to be able to save him. And above all – the exploration of what that means, that Phryne in the future is working to save Jack, but when he is saved, he meets not that Phryne, but his contemporary Phryne, and how that messes things up for him.

This is potentially heart breaking and beautifully handled – to layer in that last part is so interesting and Jack’s hesitation was a great surprise for me: "And so he had got on the ship, determined to tell her in person that things had changed. He would explain that he had unexpectedly met someone from his past, not exactly an old friend, but someone he cared for very deeply. (…) it wouldn’t be right for him to be with her, knowing he was in love with someone else." But when he meets Phryne – his contemporary Phryne – the distinction breaks down: “He tried to reason with himself, this isn’t the woman who searched for you for ninety years, who saved your life five times… but his arguments faltered in the face of the empirical evidence that she quite clearly was.”

Then, to just top it all up right over the top, the story ends with another, similar scene – Jack is going to die again so that others can live, this time in World War II:

> Ex-Detective Inspector Jack Robinson, currently serving as a Captain in the British Expeditionary Forces, sat on the floor under the window holding a much worn photograph. He gazed up at the ceiling, wondering idly… death by smoke or rescue by the woman he loved.  
>  Either way, he understood now, it was just a matter of time…

The beautiful thing with the fic is that it is left open-ended like this. We have no idea whether Jack is saved again; whether he then has to revisit this painful day more than once; or whether this is just where he dies, but still, future Phryne’s earlier time work did manage to give them a decade more together. What will happen is up to the reader, and this really makes the fic linger in the reader’s mind.

Last in this section, in Rithebard [“The Painting”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMJuly2017/works/11630412) it is space travel rather than time travel – Phryne and Jack need to solve a disappearance, and it turns out at the house they are visiting there are paintings that people can walk into. The most dangerous one is a painting that makes the people just want to stay in a state of bliss and love, and it is a proof of their resilience that even though they do love each other and are seized by this feeling they can also, after having indulged in it shortly, break loose and walk out of this place of overwhelming harmony – in the process also finding and saving the man who had disappeared.

Finally, I’ll turn to the specific fics of “Out of Space and Time” that are actual crossovers – where the world of Miss Fisher is blended together with other fictional worlds or genres. This is a way of writing fic that is rather difficult, to manage to blend two worlds and still do both of them justice. The writers in this fandom surely knows what they’re doing, and the results are amazing. I am personally lucky in that some of the crossovers are made with fictional worlds I know and love, and the blends are working brilliantly.

In QuailiTea, [“The Next Adventure”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11501031/chapters/25803396), Miss Fisher’s world is mixed with the Literary Detective Thursday Next, who is [a novel character written by Jasper Fforde](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thursday_Next). Thursday’s world is rather complicated and I probably won’t manage to do it justice here, but she is working in the BookWorld, where all imaginable books exist, and where it’s possible to bookjump – walk in and out of books – and where characters can disappear and novels be suddenly rewritten. Thursday is working for Jurisfiction and in this case, she is finding a discombobulated Phryne Fisher who has troubles because the tv series has started to air and she has two different backstories and two different relationships to the people around her – is Mr Butler a widower or a happily married man? Is Lin her long-time lover or an old friend? Is Jack Robinson a policeman friend or someone she’s falling in love with? 

The story is very quick-footed and humourous and playing with Thursday Next’s way of moving around inside novels – here’s an example of that: “I’m not liking this. Bert, see if you can get a bead on where Inspector Robinson turns up next in the text. We might be able to jump ahead and beat whoever it is who’s after him to the punch. Phryne, if you can get a message to Dot, see if she can prolong her search for her sister a little, maybe a quarter-chapter. We can’t have the narrative bounce back to you before I figure out what’s going on. Once you’ve done that, meet me at the antiques store two chapters early.”

To write this story, you need to have a distinct grasp of the worlds of both BookPhryne, TVPhryne _and_ Thursday Next, and that is no small feat. Added to this, QuailiTea has imagined a Phryne Fisher novel that doesn’t exist, where Jack Robinson is killed, and this book is the very scene where Thursday and Phryne have to solve the mystery of who is trying to mess up the books and Phryne’s backstory – and, perhaps, they can also save Jack from dying? The fic is still not finished, so I don’t know if this is where it’s going. In the first novel about Thursday Nex, “The Eyre Affair”, she manages to change the ending of Jane Eyre (to the ending we know), so there is the potential of irreversibly changing books. How will the mashup of the two different Phrynes work out? We still have to see the resolution. 

A fic that has some similarities with QuailiTea’s fic is flashofthefuse [“Of Two Worlds”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11619042/chapters/26123685). Here is no Thursday Next, but here is also a humourous play on the differences between BookPhryne and TVPhryne – so it is too a crossover with the Phryne Fisher books. In this fic, it takes a little while before the reader realises what is happening, but I have to spoil it a little to discuss it – apologies for this! Phryne is opening the door at Wardlow and meets a visitor – a handsome, well-dressed man who seems to know her and her house exceedingly well, although she’s never met him before. He has the gall to claim to be Jack Robinson, although she knows that her friend in the police force looks nothing like that: “You are not Jack Robinson!” She laughed incredulously. Jack Robinson was a wonderful man and a dear friend, but Jack was a plain looking man. He had what might be called a forgettable face. This man had a face she imagined would haunt her dreams. A chiseled jar and impossible sharp cheekbones. And eyes so blue they conjured endless sky or deep oceans. Eyes that were currently looking at her with a mix of concern and alarm.

Then to mess it up even further, a second Phryne – almost but not completely identical with herself – turns up, as well as her own Jack, BookJack. It turns out that both Wardlows exist at the same place, and that Mr Butler is a liminal person, inhabiting both worlds and serving both Miss Fishers, and he had forgotten to close the door between the realities properly. Mr B always seems magically knowledgeable, and here we get the perfect explanation. Also, in this story he has half a life where Mrs Butler is still alive, and he shares all his adventures in the other world with her, which is incredibly sweet and a brilliant take on the trope. 

Another fic that dares to make a crossover and makes it astonishingly well is scruggzi, [“The Long Road to Patagonia”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11291040/chapters/25259862), as well as a first oneshot of [“The Spacephrack Drabbles”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11575518/chapters/26010375) – the latter is a short scene that is actually written for the trope challenge, the first is a more long-term fic that fitted the challenge. 

This is a wonderful exploration about what would happen if Miss Fisher met The Doctor. Scruggzi has delved into this question thoroughly, not keeping it only as a fun idea but writing it as something that truly affects Phryne and Jack. Phryne goes missing while flying her father home to England, and Jack finds discrepancies around her disappearance and refuses to believe that she actually is dead. The truth is that she has been caught in a timeloop, and once the Doctor has saved her, and reincarnated into a female doctor, she’s been thrown six months into her own future. 

On the one hand, the fic is about fun and meeting adventures and being allowed to travel to see the universe, on the other hand it’s about loss and grief, and about how that affects you. The combination of this is stunning. There are many beautiful scenes – of Phryne and the Doctor trying to understand each other; of Phryne grieving her father who dies; of Jack grieving and not accepting that Phryne is dead; of Mac trying to stop Jack from digging himself into a hole claiming that Phryne is not dead; of Dot breaking into the Adventuresses’ Club; of Phryne’s and Jack’s different ways of believing or disbelieving the Doctor and the time travelling police box. The way it takes some time before they solve the oddities created by time travel, and the way also Mac and Dot are important parts in this plot, is great. And there is wonderful banter between the three of them:

> The Doctor considered this. “You want to use the Oscillator to shield yourself, keeping you from damaging yourself and time, in order to meet Jack in the past for what I am assuming is a booty call?”  
>  Actually, in terms of fixing the paradox, the idea was rather brilliant and the Doctor was a little disappointed not to have come up with it herself. The detectives were looking at her in confusion.  
>  “A what?” asked Jack, although he could have made a fair guess.  
>  “Netflix and chill?” She hazarded.  
>  When this got nothing but blank faces, the Doctor mentally readjusted her lexicon of idioms by a few decades.  
>  “A romantic liaison?”  
>  Jack had the grace to look a little embarrassed, but Phryne Fisher had never known shame in her life and was unlikely to make its acquaintance now.  
>  “Naturally. Does that matter?”  
>  “As a plan, it’s all kinds of risky and every flavour of dangerous.” The Doctor grinned. “I love it. Let’s get going.”

and between the Doctor and Jack:

> The Doctor scrutinised him for a long moment. “Well, you better work it out in your head somehow now that you’re joining us.”  
>  He raised his eyebrows. “I am?”  
>  She gave him a very patronising look which did not make him feel especially keen to take any of her advice, however sensible. “Please. You’d follow her anywhere.

In the short, more tounge-in-cheek drabble, there is a specific meeting with the Doctor’s enemies, where Phryne discovers the backside of wearing a time appropriate corset.

Finally, omgimsarahtoo‘s [“The Winds of the Heavens”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11659782/chapters/26235648) is not a crossover with a specific story but with a whole genre, [steampunk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk) romance. There is no good way to illustrate this fic – here we really would need fanart! 

Jack Robinson is going on an undercover mission, in a world where there is space travel in fin-de-siècle aesthetics, and the captain of the ship he will travel with is Phryne Fisher. Here, both Jack and Dot are much less modest and restrained than in the show, which fits the AU perfectly. Phryne and Dot are almost equally experienced and cool, and Jack is much more quickly on the boat with starting a sexual relationship with Phryne, but there is still tension between them, and also a question of what is truth, what is lies, and what is evasion. 

Apart from the characters meeting, the first chapters have given us Phryne singling out Jack in a scene that overflows with the female gaze; a meeting in a more intimate setting; several of the characters reimagined as other species or as cyborgs (Mac with technical enhancements! Jane as an alien girl Phryne has taken care of!) and a lot world-building and details about the world that this story is set in. It’s only been two chapters yet, and although Jack has made his way to Phryne’s bed in a rather steam(punk)y fashion, it’s still rather open how the plot will develop.

This was all from me for the July trope. I am looking forward to [the August trope – the Dulcinea effect!](http://firesign23.tumblr.com/post/163670696618/mfmm-year-of-tropes-august-challenge)


	8. Knights in shining armours – or shining dresses. The MFMM August trope challenge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> About August's trope challenge, The dulcinea effect.  
> The coming trope, for September, is ["Rumours and Gossip"](http://firesign23.tumblr.com/post/164857575977/mfmm-year-of-tropes-septembers-challenge).

The August trope for MFMM turned out – just like the earlier ones – to instigate a lot of really good fic, and also very different fic. August’s trope was “the Dulcinea effect”, which means “the compulsion many male heroes have to champion, quest for, or die for girls they met five minutes ago”; the name is taken from the woman Don Quixote in Cervantes’s novel strives to be a champion for.

This is a fun trope, but it’s also very ironic – making fun of these self-appointed and not seldom selfish and self-aggrandizing male champions. This poses specific problems for a fictional universe like Miss Fisher’s, where most men aren’t depicted as stupid like that, and where the male lead is behaving in what could be said to be the opposite of the dulcinea effect: very rational, not seldom actually saving people, but also hardly ever managing to save the leading lady, because the lady is so good at saving herself – which he accepts. 

This means that just like the soulmate trope of January (see chapter 1), the idea and the fictional universe collide in interesting ways, asking for twists and tweaks and thorough considerations. The imagination of the fanfic writers of course found ways to use the trope, and it is turned around and peeked at from different angles [(here is the full collection)](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMAug2017/works). 

I’m trying to follow some kind of logic in this post by following who is the dulcineaing person, and who is being dulcinead – not that these words exist, but I hope you catch my drift.

*

First there are fics that use well-known story templates to completely subvert the idea of the dulcinea trope – a subversion that fits perfectly with the fictional universe of Miss Fisher.

Here we find OllyJay, kidnthehall & solitary_cyclist, [“Love and Other Fairy Tales”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11776380). This is a short, beautifully crafted fic, with few words and with images, rather like a picture book – a picture book for adults. It explores who Phryne is and what she stands for, and shows this as a contrast to the common fairy tale idea of a woman needing a man to come to a her rescue. The fic is very succinct, and has one-liners about Phryne like “She could do everything herself – but good company was always welcome” and “She was not in distress – she had climbed up here for the view." 

A second fairy tale to the trope is loopyhoopyfrood, [“The Prince Who Said No”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMAug2017/works/11790633), where Phryne tells a lovely bedtime story about a princess who dances with everyone except one prince, who all the time tells her no, and he’s the one she falls for. The prince is so far from dulcineaing that he doesn’t even pay her much attention, which triggers her curiosity. It’s a sweet and well narrated fairy tale, with lovely reactions from Dot and Hugh’s daughter, and in the end Jack peeks into the room and helps out with the telling at just the right time:

> “Did they have a big wedding?”  
>  “They didn’t have any wedding.”  
>  “They didn’t get married?”  
>  “No.”  
>  “But why not?”  
>  “Because they didn’t need to.” A familiar voice spoke up from across the room, and both storyteller and audience turned to see Jack, leaning against the doorway with a soft smile on his face.

A third fic that also keeps on this meta level is fromaLongLineofTVDetectives, [“A Hero’s Journey”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMAug2017/works/11725749), an amusing scene where a man is pitching a movie to Phryne in the hopes of her financing it. Both Phryne and Dot find some fault in the story’s depiction of the hero, that after an absence of three days is coming to rescue a woman he doesn’t even know: 

> “But three days,” Dot repeated, her voice lowered this time as she leaned closer to Phryne to speak to her directly. “I think the damsel may have saved herself by now.”  
>  “In that case, the hero will be quite disappointed,” Phryne answered wryly. (…)  
>  “I don’t think so, Miss,” Dot replied, her voice now barely above a whisper. “I’ve seen quite a lot of movies. I’m certain the hero will find a more agreeable damsel in the next town.” 

Another fic that is primarily resisting the dulcinea trope is fromaLongLineofTVDetectives, [“Of Mothers and Men and Rescues”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMAug2017/works/11952315). This fic gives us two scenes where Phryne doesn’t need to be rescued, and also isn’t, although the set up and the conversations touch on the possibility of it – and rather like in the first fairy tale mentioned, she doesn’t need to be rescued, but she doesn’t mind company either. It’s lovely done, with a lot of mirroring between the two scenes, and both of them including Phryne hiding away from her mother, one time right before and one time right after the show’s time frame. 

*

In some fics, the person going into dulcinea mode is Phryne herself. 

Quailitea, [“Rain and Whiskey”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMAug2017/works/11882565), is a lovely and very poignant drabble of Phryne’s introspection about her need to save people, ever since Janey: “And all the rescuing she’d done since, proof that she had always tried, dammit, that it had only been because she was too small and too weak then, and now that she was strong, it would never happen again.” It is beautiful, and in all its shortness it captures a lot.

Also in whopooh, [“Separate Spheres”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMAug2017/works/11783631), it is Phryne that has an urge to be the saviour, in this case in a more light-hearted situation – she wants to save Jack from social embarrassment. But it turns out that Jack doesn’t need her knight in shiny dress-stint, since he already has a date to the event they’re invited to, which instead causes Phryne embarrassment. On a gala night for Raymond’s film, she has to navigate the insight that Jack has friends, friends she had no idea existed, and even female friends. Much as it rattles her, it also piques her interest and of course she befriends this unexpected woman. 

Finally, Phryne in the dulcinea role is also in Inzannatea, [“Axiom Tilt”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11918022/chapters/26932350), where Phryne wants to play saviour to a young nurse. The fic has only started so I can’t predict where it’s going, but it has several very interesting parts: Phryne trying to cope with a case she starts to feel very personal about, wanting very much to help out, and Phryne being unhappy about Jack’s too thorough adjustability. I know there will be plot twists coming, but I can’t predict in what way.

*

The next type of fic is where someone wants to save Phryne. 

In rithebard, [“Interference”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMAug2017/works/11779167), a random, stuck up man at a party wants to rescue Phryne – from the social disaster of being with Jack. This does not end well for the unsuspecting man, whom Phryne sets straight on the matter, and in quite a physical way. In fromaLongLineofTVDetectives, [“Locked Up”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMAug2017/works/11764542), we instead see an aftermath of a similar event: a random man did try to save (well, “save”), Phryne and the result of this is that Phryne has been arrested for assault. The way Jack gets to know about this, from Dot not really breaking any confidences but hinting very thoroughly, is much fun, as is the way Jack reacts to the fact that he gets news via Dot:

> “But you’ve heard from her?”  
>  “Yes.”  
>  “Of course,” he stated, a slight edge of jealously joining his tone as he leaped to a certain conclusion from Dot’s evasiveness. “As long as she’s well.”  
>  Jack pivoted to duck back into his office before Dot’s voice stopped him again.  
>  “Did you have plans with Miss Fisher, Inspector?”  
>  “No,” he answered. “Not as such.”

Jack does not in his turn try to save Phryne per se, but he sure makes her arrest more comfortable and social.

In OllyJay’s, [“Evil in the Shadows”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11920740), the dulcinea trope is even more surprisingly developed, by the use of a crossover with another fictional universe. Here it is Spike, the vampire from Buffy the vampire slayer, who wants to get to Phryne – he wants to understand, threaten, in a way devour her. Phryne is holding her fort beautifully, and her strength here is her bravery and loyalty. The layers of the trope are several – Phryne rejects the idea of a man coming for her rescue: “This statement made her angry. “There most assuredly is a Jack but I don’t need him to rescue me.” and finally, in the end, Spike turns around from threat to instead wanting to save her.

In Fire_Sign, [“One Night In Berlin”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMAug2017/works/11694018), set during WWII, Jack seems to randomly want to save a woman, which means he seems to have become a dulcinea man. But it turns out that he knows what he’s doing, as the woman might not be a stranger after all, and might also count on him being there:

> “I wasn’t aware you were in town,” he said conversationally.  
>  “Just arrived,” the woman replied. “I do hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”

And then, interestingly enough, finally a fic actually managed to turn Jack into a proper dulcinea knight! This happens in Fire_Sign’s short fic [“In An Instant”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMAug2017/works/11781036). We’re here not talking about the world-weary, experienced Jack we know, but about young Jack, wanting to save Rosie. This is a lovely fic about young constable Jack who is in love with Rosie, but socially below her, and so they will never be – until she is in need of help and he offers. It’s a tale about how life can change in an instant – as the title says – and this choice is followed up by another similar one, to go to war. Knowing how their marriage turned out later gives the fic an extra twinge of melancholy, and it’s a beautiful exploration of one way their relationship could have started.

Two fics that put the dulcinea reaction on other characters completely are Quailitea, [“Hero in Love”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMAug2017/works/11714658), a very sweet short fic where Hugh wants to take on the whole world for his newborn daughter, and flashofthefuse [“About a Girl”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11915553) that dives into Jane’s school life seen through one of her school mates, Fin, who has a crush on her. It’s a great exploration into both the boy’s mind and into how school could be for Jane, with mean classmates and a tendency to get swallowed up by reading. There are so many lovely details here, of Fin finding out a way to help Jane against bullies without her even noticing, of Fin seeing two grown up men assaulting Jane and trying to help her – but it turns out they are Bert and Cec and only joking with her. And there’s a lovely scene where Cec really sees and understands the boy, and also gives him some really good advice about how to treat a girl.

*

I’ll round up this overview with three fics that are leaning heavily towards the lighthearted and fun in their use of the trope.

In Sassasam, [“Save Me”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMAug2017/works/11820459), there really is a rescue, Jack saving Phryne – although it turns out to be more of a sartorial rescue, and mostly being about her dignity:

> “Oh come on Miss Fisher. Are you saying you need me to save you?” he chuckled. “I thought there was no problem you couldn’t overcome.”  
>  “Jack,” she said a little more forcefully. “I need your help.”  
>  “You could ask nicely,” he replied.  
>  “Do you want me to beg?” she asked sharply.  
>  “This may never happen again,” he replied.

Also in geenee27, [“In Over Her Head”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMAug2017/works/11952453), set at the beach, there is an amusing play with the trope. A girl very much wishing for Jack, who is out in the water swimming, to rescue her decides to feign distress in the water. But when she does get rescued it is from someone else’s strong arms instead – and that is someone who completely sees through her act. Perhaps Phryne can also be said to be overly protective of Jack in relation to other women, which would be another version of the knightly persuasion, this time in a bathing suit.

Finally, scruggzi, [“Braving the Storm”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11794920/chapters/26602359), is a very fulfilling fluffy story about Jack, at City South on a Christmas eve in full storm, facing the realisation he needs to take care of two kittens. There is such powerful adorableness in Jack trying to keep up his dignity although the kittens totally melt his heart:

> The assembled day shift was therefore treated to the sight of their DI handing out assignments and issuing orders with his usual taciturn efficiency, but with one fluffy kitten in hand – which had rolled on his back in order to have his tummy tickled – and another perched on the Inspector’s shoulder, staring the junior officers down with all the ferocity of a warrior queen. It was a sight no-one at City South who saw it would ever forget, and yet no-one could quite bring themselves to question it.

There are also lovely parallels to when he himself, one year earlier, was let in by Phryne from a similar storm. Jack decides to call them Cleopatra and Marc Antony and bring them back to Wardlow, to a surprised and sleepy Phryne. The next day, as the kittens meet the household, the poking at his dignity continues: "Apparently realising quite suddenly that he had in fact been talking out loud to a kitten in a room full of people, the Inspector’s ears turned a beautifully festive shade of red and he cleared his throat, glowering at Phryne in the futile hope that she would let his pre-caffeinated comment go unremarked.”

*

As we can see, the explorations of the trope has really gone in all directions, and I am extra pleased with that this month, as I thought it might perhaps be a bit of a difficult trope – but it turned out to be just as good at generating fics as the others have been. 

That was all about the August trope. And I am very much looking forward to the September trope challenge – “Rumours and Gossip”.


	9. Miss Fisher and the Power of Rumours – the September trope

It never ceases to amaze me, the range of fics that are made out of one single monthly trope. This “MFMM year of trope” challenges that Fire_Sign started slightly by chance has given us so many awesome fics and clever variations.

My self-appointed job in trying to give an overview of them every month is a joy and also a challenge – how can I best group them together? This month’s trope, “Don’t Believe the Rumours”, proved to be a little hard to structure, but finally I decided to divide the fics in two halves – the ones focusing on rumours about Phryne and Jack as a couple, and those where the rumours are about something else. [(Here is the full collection.)](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMSept2017/works)

***

I’ll start with the ones where the rumours are about Phryne and Jack as a scandalous couple.

First of all, FromaLongLineofTVDetectives‘ brilliantly named [“Fake News”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12011427/chapters/27181752) is a lovely and very tongue in cheek fic about Phryne and Jack being blackmailed with a photo that shows them indulging in carnal pleasures together. The people around them don’t realize it’s a fake photo, and this gives hilarious moments between Phryne and Dot and Phryne and Aunt P. Mac, the woman of science and reason, helps Phryne figure it all out. There is also a delicious encounter with Jack over the scandalous photo, in full comic style, and to top it all up an even more glorious ending, including Aunt P and a new fake photo.

There is a lovely hint at wishing that the rumours and what the photo depicts would actually be true, which Mac delivers succinclty to stop their bantering: “Would you two please stop,” Mac interjected. “The photo is a fake. Neither one of you truly want it to be a fake, but there we are. There’s nothing I can do about that.”

This theme is also present in Yeoyou's [“Believe the Rumours”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMSept2017/works/11969334), which is a short fic following Jack’s inner musings, where he rather wishes the rumours about him and Phryne were true: “If, however, hypothetically speaking, rumours got around that you were having a steamy affair with a beautiful woman – wouldn’t you want them to be true?” 

A related take is Sassasam's [“Rumour Has It”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMSept2017/works/12168000), where it’s not only a thought but also turns into action. It’s a lovely take on a first time, triggered by the rumours that claim they are already an item. ““Jack,” she whispered. “Come home with me. If the world is going to conjecture about us, why don’t we simply give them something to talk about.” They finally make a go for it, and it ends with lovely banter:

> Mr Butler presented the morning paper as Jack and Phryne tucked into scrambled eggs and bacon in the dining room.
> 
> “Oh dear,” Phryne remarked. “It appears we made the papers again.”
> 
> “Already?” Jack replied.
> 
> “Rumour has it we slept together last night,” she said with a smile.
> 
> “Well, they’re wrong again,” Jack smirked, “because I don’t remember doing any sleeping.”

The rumours are of a slightly different kind in earanie, [“Heaven beside you, Hell within”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMSept2017/works/12152670) (this is her first fic in this fandom – welcome!). This fic explores a contemplative Phryne, that has started to feel she might want to change from her normal casual attitude towards men to be something different with Jack. The rumours about her and Jack are closely followed by other rumours, about her own supposedly callous nature and how she would surely reject him, and they are part of what is triggering her realisation about her emotions.

flashofthefuse’s [“Foul Whisperings”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMSept2017/works/12041148) takes a humorous angle on the rumour trope (despite the title’s dramatic use of _Macbeth_ ). Phryne is upset at gossip that says that Jack has a hard time at work because of her. She barges in with a speed that leaves Jack entirely confused, and the fic starts gloriously with “She burst through his office door like—well, like Phryne Fisher”. Jack’s inner monologue is lovely: 

> "He’d long since stopped caring what others thought of him. He’d always believed she was of the same mind. That being the case, ignoring it all had seemed the best policy.
> 
> _That was only partly true,_ he admitted to himself. He never brought it up because to bring up the rumours might lead to an admission that there was some basis for them. He’d done very little to discourage her teasing and in fact had actively encouraged it in his quiet way."

Phryne’s agitation meets a stoic Jack, since the gossipers has gotten things completely wrong, and it takes some time for them to untange the mess. The misunderstandings and banter are wonderful and very energetic, and they end with Jack actually paying Phryne a compliment:

> “You’re aware of the rumours?” She asked.
> 
> “Foul whisperings are abroad,” he said with mock dramatics.
> 
> “You’re not bothered?”
> 
> “Am I bothered that people suspect I’m involved in a torrid affair with a beautiful woman? I rather think it helps my reputation, in some manner, though I’m not sure what it says for yours,” he smirked.

longlineoftvdetectives’ [“Almost”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMSept2017/works/12085518) is a poignant short take on Phryne, Jack and Rosie after the end scene in “Marked for Murder”, where Jack put his Abbortford scarf around Phryne’s neck. Phryne is inviting Jack over to Wardlow when Rosie comes by and asks him to come for dinner with her and her father, and Phryne acquiesces. There is so much emotion going on here, in all directions, and there is a specific hurt in Rosie that makes me ache for her, because the Abbortsford scarf in question once upon a time was a gift from her.

The fic also has an interesting ending: “It’s an open invitation, Jack,” she said plainly. “Dinner. Nightcap. I’m not going anywhere.” Then she drives away, Jack standing there watching her “ease the Hispano from its parking space, maneuvering easily across the open field, then smoothly accelerating as she reached the open road. He didn’t turn his gaze until she had receded completely into the distance.” This is both an interesting contrast to the end of season 3, where she does go away and he’s again standing there watching her, and to what will happen in the next episode, “Blood at the Wheel”, when he will try to go away from their partnership.

In @geenee27‘s [“Improper”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMSept2017/works/12194508), the rumour has come to the ears of the Deputy Commissioner, who barges into Jack’s office, only to meet a composed Inspector standing by the shelves, schooling his expression "from one of ‘deer in the headlights’ to one of professional diffidence.” He questions Jack – “ you must realize that our office, our men, our force must be impeachable …. above reproach”– and although Jack seems to our eyes very close to cracking, he manages to keep his composure and assure his boss that everything is in order:

> “I understand one of your civilian consultants is a very beautiful lady detective.”
> 
> _Here we go._ Jack didn’t even blanch and said evenly. “A very intelligent and resourceful detective who has provided invaluable information in solving some of our cases. “ The DC continued to study him closely.
> 
> “There is nothing improper about our investigations or association.”

As the Deputy Commissioner has gone, I will let you guess who comes out of hiding, in a rather dishevelled state, to tease Jack about this near hit.

Also in Sarahtoo‘s [“Just a Little Light Crime”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12236847) the rumours about the detectives prove to be true, but possible to deny. The fic entails a delightful long distance telephone call between Phryne and her mother after Phryne has gone back to Melbourne. Margaret is wondering about a rumour that Phryne and Jack had been up to no good at a party in London. Phryne is very skilled at denying this (” She’d had plenty of practice— which just made her inability to lie convincingly to Jack more frustrating”) and even manages to not let her mother know they’re a couple. The vision of Phryne and Jack colluding in how to keep up appearances while they very much are an item is such light-hearted fun, as is Phryne right up lying to her mother while Jack is standing beside her kissing her on the top of her head (such a lovely image). Though I for one sure want to know what happens the day Margaret realises Phryne has been hiding this from her. Even if she likes Jack, “To be honest, I was rather hoping that the rumor was true. I rather like your inspector; he has a steadying influence on you. You could do far worse” she would probably not like that Phryne didn’t tell her when Jack was a guest there for such a long time…

Ollyjay’s [“They Say”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMSept2017/works/12038214) is using the trope in a very clever way, and I won’t be able to talk about it without spoiling it, apologies for that! Here is a nameless man sitting in his home when a woman enters, talking derisively about “that Fisher woman”. As readers, we first cannot be sure if this is Jack having another woman who is antagonistic to Phryne, or if it just seems that way and it’s not even Jack – but after a while, we come to the conclusion this is actually Phryne, surprising Jack by coming home from her flight quicker than expected, and the talking about “what people say” is just an ingenious surface of pretended indifference while the emotions are swirling around beneath it. 

She offers what people might say about her, and he counters with what idle tongues might be saying about him, and it’s all a hidden declaration of love and desire – it’s wonderfully done. It takes a long time before Jack even looks up to watch her:

> Toying with her glass, she asked, “Do you think she’ll come here?”
> 
> He closed his book, “Now, why would she do that?” He put the book on the small table and picked up his whiskey again. His eyes passed over her. In black trousers with a dark top and almost no make up; the overall effect was understated elegance, which was a look he admired very much.
> 
> “You know why. Do you think she’ll come here?”
> 
> “I don’t think of her at all,” he said.
> 
> “Liar.”
> 
> The contrast between what they say and what they do make the piece very fun to read, and it fits perfectly with Phryne’s and Jack’s way of communicating: “That woman is just scandalous. You should stay away from her.” / “Yes, you’re right.“ He put down his glass and held out his hand. "Come here?”

***

The other half is the stories where the rumours are not primarily about Phryne and Jack as a couple. 

Here we find loopyhoopyfrood, [“Birds of a Feather”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMSept2017/works/12218328), a oneshot that outlines a completely different AU for Miss Fisher – setting up a scene that plays with identities and roles in an interesting way, giving us a version of Phryne and Jack that I think noone expected. Inzannatea, “Axiom Tilt” is a story coming from the August trope, and has [chapter 6](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11918022/chapters/27652032) designated for this month’s trope. We’re here in the middle of the story where Phryne is suspiciously off, behaving oddly, and the reader doesn’t know exactly why, but has a bad feeling in her stomach. The case is hard to be sure of – who of the characters are manipulative and bad, who are just affected by that but themselves not as bad as it sounds? How much is Phryne off, and how much does it only seem like it? In chapter 6, Jack is trying to make sense of the case and sort out which of the rumours are true and which are planted. Is the doctor or the nurse the bad guy? There seems to be more than one thing that’s wrong here, and we’ll have to wait some more for the answers.

In Fire_Sign, [“A Hundred Days of Sorrow”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12138531/chapters/27536775), the rumours are not so much existing, as being feared. The story uses the trope beautifully by letting the rumours and the damaging effect of them form a backdrop to the story. Jack followed Phryne to England, but the relationship was destroyed by something that has to do with rumours, or more correctly fear of rumours, of how their relationship might be interpreted by others. We meet them months after this happened, when both are back in Melbourne and they’re not speaking to each other. We only get glimpses its of what happened through their interactions and dialogue – thus making us have to put together small bits of information. This means the rumour part is not only a theme in the fic but also in its structure, and it’s beautifully done.

Jack comes to Phryne – disturbing her in the middle of a tryst with a lover, and the all-knowing Mr B knows she would want to prioritize a Jack in need and thus interrupts her evening – because he has been accused of murder and needs her help. Phryne takes his case, and both the awkwardness between them and the moments of being in sync in spite of everything are lovely. The layers of the present and the past and what could have been are heart clenching:

> He turned as she entered the kitchen, carrying two tumblers and a decanter of whiskey—for an instant he was in her flat in London, that first night when he’d been utterly exhausted by travel and lovemaking and she’d brought the whiskey to bed, laughing as they’d sipped from the bottle like teenagers stealing their parents’ liquor supply. He closed his eyes, feeling a small smile tug at the corner of his lips despite himself.

And when they speak on the phone, her voice “was warm and kind and so Phryne he couldn’t help but love her all over again”:

> “I should… I was heading to bed,” he fumbled. “I’ll drop the manuscript off when I have a chance, though.”
> 
> “I’ll look forward to it.”
> 
> The worst part was, he knew she meant it; it just wasn’t enough.

Phryne needs to work through how the evidence that points at Jack are false, and she also inadvertedly happens to send him into a trap, where he is kidnapped – and later she is too. It seems the case give them one last chance of really going to the bottom of their feelings for each other (if they only survive it). The story isn’t finished yet, so exactly what happened between them we don’t know yet, only that it broke their burgeoning romance, and neither do we know if it’ll be possible to fix it – but we do know that none of them really wants to be without the other.

Quailitea, [“Of All the Unlikely Things”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMSept2017/works/12161268), is a fic about rumours and gossip from Prudence Stanley’s point of view, lovingly explored. I adore the fic already from the note: “What is a devoted, if exasperated, aunt to do?” In this story, Prudence hears all kinds of gossip about her niece, and she is not scandalized but rather plays with it – “she harrumphed to the hilt at every insinuation, while maybe, once or twice, ‘accidentally’ influencing a few of the more fabulous stories”. This is not rumours about Phryne and Jack, but about Phryne doing all kinds of spectacular things. Finally she also meets “That persistent Inspector” and thinks that “for once, she might just surprise her niece, rather than the other way around” – and so in a very delightful way she helps to send him after her.

What was meant as a second chapter to this fic turned into a full story of its own, Quailitea’s [“Those Things Done For Love”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMSept2017/works/12212670) (and hopefully, there can be even more coming in this series?). It’s a delicious take on the rumour trope – again, not playing with rumours of Phryne and Jack, but in other ways. Jack is travelling by boat to England, and while on board he realises he seems like an enigma to the other passengers, and happen to embrace it – kind of offering himself up as an object of gossip to make the journey more entertaining for the other passengers, especially a young woman, Clarissa Selverton, who likes to read mysteries: “it dawned on him that he was pure enigma to these people. Convention-defying, mysterious and apparently rich – he was… basically, Miss Fisher. A warm crawl of absurd amusement came over him, and he heard himself replying archly, with a Fisherine nonchalance”. And later, when talking about false identites, he spikes her interest with a comment like “The last time I needed an assumed persona, I created an Archibald Jones, but he has a record of breaking and entering now, so I can’t use him anymore.”

It’s a delight to follow their interactions and her interest, and the way he does it also as a kindness – trust Jack Robinson to find a way to help, right? – and also how she finally realizes there really isn’t a riddle, asking him “Are you making fun of me, Mr Robinson?”. And Jack giving her the advice to bascially be like Phryne is a wonderful touch. It’s a lovely story, and then ending with a proper reunion too – seen from the outside and with a splash of Aunt P, which makes it even better.

In whopooh, [“Five Times Mrs Robinson Comes To Stay (And One Time She Says Goodbye)”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMSept2017/works/12059106), the rumours are not so predominant, but they’re something that’s there in the air in different respects. The fic captures – rather light-heartedly and humorously – five times when Jack has surprise visits by his mother, Mrs Robinson. There are several dimensions of the rumours: his mother realising there is a lady detective in his life, Phryne hearing about Jack having a visitor – and a visitor who gives him lunch boxes, no less – and trying to sleuth the meaning of this worrying fact, and Phryne at one time accidentally barging in on Mrs Robinson instead of on her son. The story gives an outside perspective on the development of Phryne’s and Jack’s relationship and also gives to Jack a clever mother who is not easy to fool.

scruggzi’s [“With Such a Wistful Eye”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMSept2017/works/12144234), finally, is such a deep and beautiful and emotional take on the rumour trope – and again the rumour is not about Phryne and Jack as a couple. In the midst of their relationship, Jack tells Phryne about a man, Alex, he might have fallen in love with during the war, and the fic grows into a thorough exploration of so many things: of a Jack that also has feelings for men, of life during war and finding an emotional connection during that horrible time, of Jack feeling like he was cheating on Rosie because of this, of him coming back to the normal life after war and about this other man being destroyed by war, and of the relationship with Phryne being so deep and so non-judgemental that he can tell her about this part of his life without fear of recrimination. The rumour part is set during the war, when some of the men suspect Jack and Alex of having a too close friendship, and the exploration of dutybound and careful Jack realising he has this side in him, and how to deal with it, is simply stunning. There is also so much said about war, started already in the first line of the retrospect, “Lance Corporal Robinson had been a soldier for longer than he had been a husband”, and about the downfall of Jack’s and Rosie’s marriage, something Alex talks about from his perspective: “You can’t live a whole life for other people, Jack,” he had told him once. / “Clearly, Alex, you are not a married man,” he had responded dryly”.

The way the story is mixing the retrospect in itself and the act if narrating it – and Phryne’s way of listening and understanding being such an important part of the telling – is beautiful and means this very much becomes a story about the two of them and the strength of their bond, even though it mainly is about a long lost love of Jack’s. The parallels between Phryne and Alex are interesting to see, and the hidden climax of Jack’s wartime relationship – hidden because he isn’t sure whether it happened or not – is poignant and emotional, beautiful and filled with guilt: “I don’t think I wanted it to have happened. I didn’t want to be that kind of man. Rosie, she deserved better.” It’s a very reasonable thing for Jack to think, and also makes the way Phryne listens to him – making him say out loud for the first time the words that he actually fell in love with Alex – stand out in the story. It’s a beautiful way of making a story about old love become a way to strengthen their present love, and to give Jack many new nuances.

***

Finally, two fics that have only begun and I’m not sure where to put it in my structure above, as the real depths and breadths of gossip are yet to be revealed. Comeaftermejackrobinson and missingmissfisher’s [“Truth’s Shoes”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12138267/chapters/27535902) is set in the midst of the episode “Death defying feats”, after the first dinner between the detectives were cancelled due to the Baron’s arrival, Dot receives a letter, disappears and seems to have been kidnapped. At the same time, Jack has been dining out with another woman which meant he wasn’t there when the others were searching for Dot. This causes Bert’s anger and makes Phryne wonder what is so different for her with Jack compared to other men. Where the story will go, we’ll probably see rather soon. Also RositaLG’s [“Portrait of the Artist”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12052410/chapters/27291930) is in the beginning, and has given us a wonderful fight between Phryne and Jack, where Jack is angry with Phryne for putting herself in danger, and when he finds that she has been arrested he lets her sit in the cell, where she meets Elsie Tizzard. Phryne tells her cell mate that Jack is angry with her, and Elsie is loyal with her favourite copper: 

> “Revenge? Jack Robinson?!” Elsie shook her head emphatically. “Nah. He’s got a heart of gold.”
> 
> “You’d be surprised.” Phryne countered, glaring down the hall once more. “A raid, of all the things!” She tsked her luck. “I foolishly stayed behind, because everyone in the Victoria Police Force knows that I’m not a threat. Well, that I’d never use my skills against them at least.” She corrected herself. “It’s not my fault that I am better at my job and RAIDED THE DRUG DEN FIRST.” She shouted down the hall at her captors.

Phryne manages to get out by playing her best card, her close aquaintance with the Commissioner, and she and Jack are called to him to try to figure out their collaboration. The fic gives a very interesting reason for Phryne knowing the Commissioner, stemming back all the way to the investigation into Janey’s disappearance. "“Tea?” He asked the pair. /“The usual, please.” Phryne smiled and the Commissioner’s heart visibly melted a little." There has only been two chapters so far, and as with "Truth's Shoes", I suspect we will be given more details about the rumour trope in the coming chapters.

***

That’s all for the September trope. The October trope has already been announced, it’s “Breaking the Fourth Wall” and [the post about it is here](http://firesign23.tumblr.com/post/165933425412/mfmm-year-of-tropes-october-challenge). I’m very much looking forward to what will come out of it!


	10. Miss Fisher Unleashed – walls breaking down in the October trope challenge

The October trope might have made one or two of the writers a little nervous. “Breaking the fourth wall” is a real challenge, and results in stories that are highly self-aware of their status as stories and constructions, and also often happily explore the lines between fantasy and reality. That sure does put some demands on the writer. Perhaps also on the reader, in order to get suck into a highly self-aware fictional world like that.

I am very fond of this kind of stories – they are often both amusing and food for thought. They make some kind of short-circuit between narrative levels in a story that usually are separated. There are different ways of doing this. The most elaborate one, where the story and our reality are either affecting each other or even becoming the same thing, can be a real jolt to the readers’ sensibilities, in a pleasurable way. The character may for example become aware that s/he is being written, or that things change in her/his surroundings because of words, or odd things may start to happen in the writer’s real world. Other possibilities keep more clearly within the story world, for example by allowing a story within the story to comment on it or interact with it. As we will see in this overview, many different techniques have been used this month. There is potential for both horror, sadness and existential crisis in this type of writing, but it’s very reasonable that the main strand is humour [(here is the full collection](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMOct2017) \- although please note that several of the fics have actually not been added there by their writers).

Breaking the fourth wall has of course happened before in this fandom. One clever example is 221aubrina’s creation [“The Library”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10027424), where specimens of Jack that have been damaged in fanfic are returned and fixed by the staff – a very fun comment on a tendency to put Jack through a lot in the stories. Another is QuailiTea’s crossover with the universe of Thursday Next, [“The Next Adventure”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11501031/chapters/25803396), which to its very nature is super metafictive, commenting on the characters both as persons and as figures in a text at the same time. A third is JackPhryne4eva‘s [“Cafe Blend”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5004184), the story of a reader sitting in a café reading Miss Fisher fic while perhaps meeting Jack. 

For this overview, I will start with fics that don’t break the wall so radically, but keep the break logically inside the fictional universe, and then move on to fics that are more typically meta fictive and aware of being literary constructions, to stories where the writers/readers’ world somehow gets blended with the character’s world.

First, stories that keep the fictional world intact. I’ll start with Sarahtoo, [“Art Imitates Life”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12440769), where Phryne is hired to search for a young woman, Ophelia Ogilvy. Ophelia turns out to be obsessed with the famous lady detective and her inspector, and has collected newspaper pictures of them and also writes stories about them. Basically, she’s a writer of Real Person Fanfiction in 1920s Melbourne, and her fanart has striking similarities to tumblr posts. This is incredibly fun and gives us this wonderful feeling of how, even if the technology has changed, human nature has not. Of course, Phryne is surprised by this, but she is also the kind of woman to not lash out against it but to more cautiously advice the young girl; Ophelia is of course very embarrassed that Phryne found out. There are many wonderful comments that are possible to extend to the fic writers, like when Phryne has read through the scrapbook and Jack arrives: “Jack’s voice always sent a shiver down Phryne’s spine, but right now, it affected her even more. She’d spent the afternoon reading through Ophelia Ogilvy’s scrapbook, and she was feeling rather… stimulated.”

Ophelia has, for example, written about Phryne’s and Jack’s first meeting, even if she has embellished it with emotions they perhaps didn’t really have. “All I felt for you that first day was annoyance,” as Jack mutters. To top it all up, Phryne even seduces Jack with tales from the scrapbook.

> “Is it different from what we usually do?” Jack’s hands unfastened the button at her hip and then slid inside the back of her pajama trousers’ waistband, pushing them down her thighs. Phryne kicked her feet carefully to help him remove them, then promptly wound her legs around his again.  
>  “Not as imaginative as we tend to be,” she said on a gasp as he pushed up her pajama top and covered her breast with his mouth.

And Phryne, realizing Ophelia Ogilvy finds Jack attractive, thinks – rather cheekily directed to all the fans – that “It was just too bad that Ophelia would never know just how weak her imaginings were compared to the real thing.”

In whopooh, [“The Lady in the Magazine”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMOct2017/works/12390048), the writer within the world is instead Dot, who is writing thinly veiled fanfiction about Phryne and Jack for a woman’s magazine. Phryne finds this out through one of their most enthusiastic readers, Aunt P, and subtly calls her out on it. Dot becomes more and more nervous, until she confesses she’s behind the stories. Dot is really “one of us”: "It had become her favourite thing to imagine what would finally make them break down and just kiss each other. Passionately and at length. She had imagined hundreds of scenarios, the one more fanciful than the other, and she loved them all. Dot might be innocent, but she had seen things and read things, and she had an excellent imagination to make up for the rest."

In fromaLongLineofTVDetectives’s [“Collingwood Noir”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12514356/chapters/28493932) there is similarly an in-world writer, but here the relationship between the writer and the people he portrays is more hostile. Interestingly enough, this is also the only time the writer in all of the stories is a man. This is young Paddy, from “Blood and Money”, who has grown up, lived through the second world war and started writing stories that, Phryne notices on a reading event, seems to be about her. There will be a second chapter, so maybe not all will be what it seems, if I am understanding the writer's comments correctly – it will be very interesting to see where it goes.

Another in-world example of fic within the fic is Scruggzi's and whopooh's joint fic [“Direct From the Source”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12565180), where Dot decides she needs to practice her teaching abilities, and manages to set up this with Phryne, Jack and Hugh. They all get as assignment to do “automatic writing” to a prompt, without thinking it throught too much. There is much banter and flirting around this, and it seems Phryne manages to cheat so the prompt is to her liking. The prompt consists of our October bonus prompt, the lines about the South Pole and skin to skin contact, and the three pupils start writing. We as readers are then given the opportunity to read their stories and see their reactions to each other – and there is something to say here about writing as baring your soul. The stories within the story are all commenting on their characters and relationships. Phryne blatantly flirts in her story, and makes the thinly veiled Jack suggest the skin to skin contact; blushes arise around her (“That’s very good Miss, very… um… descriptive,” Dot says). Jack more or less capitulates to her in his rather cowboy inspired story, and makes the thinly veiled Phryne be the one to suggest the skin to skin contact. Hugh bumbles on and manages to make Dot very happy. Phryne keeps on flirting through the stories:

> Phryne took up the sheet of paper on which she had written her story, folded it carefully and tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket.  
>  “You know, I don’t think my story was quite finished. Perhaps you could provide me with a few suggestions as to how it should continue?”  
>  (…)  
>  “I’m sure I could come up with one or two ideas, Miss Fisher.”

All in all, the exercise is a great success, but Dot decides that teaching might not really be something for her after all.

Inzannatea, [“Uplifting Experience”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMOct2017/works/12277626) has a very clever literal “almost breaking” of the fourth wall – or as the tag says, “Not breaking the fourth wall, just slamming hard into it “. Here, Phryne and Jack, who are rather angry at each other, get stuck in an elevator during a case. After a while the anger and tension turn into love-making. Here is literal touching of all four walls as the tryst is rather passionate, as well as upstanding, and when the elevator starts to work again there is also an extra urgency added. In the end, as a little wink, is also a proper very small break of the fourth wall. The fic has been vague about what the fight was about, and in the end Jack asks “Why were we fighting again?”: ‘"Literary device,“ she responded to his query. / "Ah, I see.” he claimed, but didn’t.

A last story that doesn’t make the wall-breaking explicit is Scruggzi, [“DRU-14/10/17-KS-1”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMOct2017/works/12344934). This is part of the writer’s series where Phryne and Jack meet Doctor Who, and they go to a foreign planet to meet a friend of the Doctor, an artificial life form that administrates everything, and that Phryne manages to flirt with in spite of him being a robot. This is a lovely and only thinly veiled homage to the Kickstarter for the Miss Fisher movie, and a celebration of the people that work hard but aren’t always paid tribute to: the administrators. It also includes the bonus trope challenge in a lovely way. The wall-breaking is thus never explicit, but heavily implied through the similarities between the story and real life, and the administrators name that can be read as Drew and the date for the end of the Kickstarter.

The homage ends with a cheer: '“To the Administrators. Without whom none of us would exist at all.” / And the four of them raised their glasses in celebration of a difficult job done spectacularly well.'

***

So, over to the fics that are very clearly aware of their status as fiction, and of being in a separate realm to reality.

First, Scruggzi, [“Doing It On Purpose”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMOct2017/works/12376557), is a wonderfully tongue-in-cheek story where the characters are intensely aware of the fact that they are acting, and that they have an audience, and also what the audience wants. It’s extremely funny, make them be half in their world, and half seeing it as if from an outside perspective.

Jack thinks that it’s important he doesn’t smile, so a moment becomes more “gif worthy”, in one scene they check if they’ve been captioned yet, and there is absolutely golden commentary like: “She made sure to clip the k in a way which made bisexual women’s knees weak. She did enjoy the attention, and a little queering of characters never hurt anyone.” When he thinks about it, Jack is “fairly sure that he must do most of his job without her presence, but there was an important plot point coming up and she would never forgive him if he left her out”.

It turns out the characters are well aware of the fanfic and also rather likes to read the explicit ones. This is Jack’s take on them, complete with a perfectly placed “probably”: “They were a personal favourite, although he wasn’t sure he wanted Phryne to know just how many of them he’d read. He had, after all, been single and probably celibate for an ambiguous but undoubtedly lengthy period – and really, who could blame him?”

Also in Geenee27, [“Rant”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12565592), the characters are aware of the fandom – they even get the news from the joint MFMM re-watches in the form of newspaper articles:

> “But Jack, doesn’t it bother you. They’re casting aspersions on our work.”  
>  “I find them rather interesting, to tell you the truth. A little criticism never hurt anyone. And it keeps us on our toes.”  
>  “Well, I’d like to see your reaction to this one. It’s firesign23 again.”  
>  “Oh I like hers, there are quite articulate. I wish foxspirit1928 would index them for future reference.”

Phryne then reads about new rants that have been made, particularly about the snog in “Murder in Montparnasse”, and teases Jack relentlessly about it, and his open-mindedness gets rather put to the test.

Eara, [“There’s a pink elephant in the cool pantry”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12584564), combines the two October challenges, placing Phryne and Jack – who haven’t managed to sort out their relationship – in a cool pantry so they finally need to talk to each other. Or rather, it’s Dot who does this. She has a very meta knowledgeable conversation with Hugh with a great punchline:

> “I must say, I’m terribly glad we got this ‘extra scene’ between those two. Can you imagine going through the whole movie before they finally realised they indeed are in love with each other!”  
>  “Oh God, Dot, you’re giving me terrible flashbacks of the last three seasons.”

leafingbookstea, [“What the Hell Did I Drink?”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12364656), is another very fun take on this, set in “Death Defying Feats”. When Jack is hit on the head after having made his liberal man-speech, instead of waking up inside the story world he wakes up on the filmset. Everyone just assumes he is the actor, Nathan Page, but in reality he is a very confused Jack – who immediately realises that Essie Davis is not Phryne, but who is she?: “Despite the heavy makeup, she was as beautiful as his Miss Fisher, and dressed as Phryne would be, in a lovely green frock.”

Even though she doesn’t understand exactly what has happened, Essie takes care of him, and she has the most wonderful line when Jack calls her “Miss Fisher”: “I didn’t know you were so Method.” In the end, he comes back to the story world – that transition means he is at least as confused here, and that matches the episode’s Jack waking up in Phryne’s bed perfectly.

rithebard, [“Privateers”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12267027/chapters/27878709) has a special take on the trope, as it creates a direct communication between the characters and the readers. In the first chapter, there is a set-up and then Mac turns to the reader: "Mac shook her head smiling then picked up her tea. She looked up and said, “So what do you think? Yes, you. I know you have many opinions. So I’ll tell you what, what comes next will come from you. I will let Phryne and Jack know and we will follow your lead. You always wanted to write one of these didn’t you?” She raised her tea cup and saluted. She is waiting for your response." Here the wall break is for asking about reader suggestions – so far it has resulted in Phryne finding three kittens in her shower, which made her turn to the reader and say, “Really? Kittens?” There is only two chapters so far, so where this will go in the future, we’ll have to wait and see.

***

Finally, we have the fics where the writer actually communicates directly with the characters – whether they meet in person (and the levels clash completely together) or the one is communicating directly into the other’s world.

It’s probably not a surprise that QuailiTea would do a very self-aware fic, considering she did the full Thursday Next-fic and is thus very well versed in everything metafictional. In [“Having a Chat”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12366408), the writer starts to talk with Jack – like a disembodied voice in italics, not as a present person – and she’s changing his world by her words. It’s a wonderful story where the writer asks Jack if he’d be alright with one of those tropes we favour, in this case putting him in a closet with Miss Fisher. He is very reluctant. The way he talks back to the writer and at the same time understands what is happening and not is a complete delight, and then when Hugh is added in even more.

> _Would you mind terribly if she’s in the story as well?_  
>  Do I have a choice?  
>  _I’ll certainly take your opinions into account. I’d be a terrible writer otherwise. Nothing worse to my mind than watching two perfectly lovely characters contorted into ridiculous shapes just so somebody’s favorites can wind up kissing ad etc._  
>  Kissing? What, you planning on following Miss Fisher around until she flirts me into kissing her? That might take a while.

Jack has his dry humour in droves, deadpanning things like _“Readership, apparently"_ , and questioning if the writer might actually be Miss Fisher: “So, incredibly powerful, ability to throw my entire life into chaos, and you really have no plan. Are you sure you’re not Miss Fisher?”

And in the end, Jack has taken a lesson from his encounter with the writer who has told him how the readers love him unbuttoned, and it is great fun: “Jack nodded, his mind slowly returning to work. But as he took the file folder from his constable, he spared a small smile towards the wall where the voice had been coming from, and loosened his tie just a hair.”

Miss Templeton in her [“Playing Miss T”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12268257), gives us a scene where the writer and Phryne sit talking and having drinks. The writer is making her rather tipsy and they celebrate both tv-series, books, Kerry Greenwood and the Kickstarter in a short and sweet dialogue. Inzannatea, [“Out of Their Depths”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12572444), is tone-wise the opposite – this is a horror story, where Phryne is in a story of total domesticity and passivity, being pregnant with Jack and not being allowed to do practically anything. This state seems like what has become of her, but soon there are signs that something is very wrong, that this is a fake reality and she’s really held hostage. From a reality of…

> “Why don’t you get some rest, darling?”  
>  “Of course. You’re right. I am very tired,” Phryne’s brow bunched in concern for a moment, then she turned to Jack, “join me? Just for a little while?”  
>  “I think it’s best given the excitement of today, that we not be too amorous yet,” Jack said carefully, but full of concern.

…Phryne instead wakes up in a cellar, being bound to a chair next to an unconscious Jack, needing to figure out what has happened. I don’t want to spoil the plot, but there are some sinister things going on and several fun plot twists. Phryne needs to get Jack to somehow understand that this is the real world and not be lulled into believing the domestic bliss – and to escape the repressive care of a new person in her life, her ever-present mother-in-law.

In whopooh, [“Stranger Than Fiction”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12540280), it is not the writer who seeks out Phryne, but the other way around. This fic is actually a direct result of me structuring this trope overview – I realized that no one had yet done that for this trope, starting in the writer’s world. In this story, a writer is sitting at home, starting a sad story where Jack is killed, when Phryne suddenly appears next to her on the sofa asking her not to do it. After Phryne has helped to re-write the story, the writer takes the opportunity to ask her about things, like her feeling of only having Jack as a lover in the fic and about her sexual preferences. Phryne reveals she now and then influences stories about herself to get happier endings.

When she talks about sex, she becomes a bit self-conscious:

> The two women looked at each other, feeling a little embarrassed. “It does sound more peculiar when you say it out loud. And about yourself,” Phryne said.  
>  “I agree,” Mia said. “I’m sure I have written those exact words, and more than once.”  
>  “Apologies,” I said, realising I was forcing them to say things aloud while I could just sit quietly and write them.  
>  “Don’t worry,” Phryne said and flashed a quick smile my way. “I’m sure it’s a great benefit for us all to say these things aloud. Especially when it comes to women’s sexuality.” She tried the words on. “Wetness. Glistening cunt. She was hot and wet from desiring him. Et cetera.”

There is quite some talking over the narrative levels, both with Jack on the page of the fic and the writer who is writing about the encounter between Phryne and her fic writer.

A second fic that takes the writer’s situation as departure is 912luvjaxlean, [“Reading Henry James”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12582684) (this is her first fic in this fandom – welcome!). This is a fun story that captures many things: the fan’s “slight” obsession with Phryne and Jack, the characters’ reluctance to be spied upon, plus making a crack at traditional literature, in this case Henry James, for being rather highflown. The writer’s sister suggests she should read James, whereupon Phryne comments:

> “Jack, you don’t really enjoy reading Henry James, do you?”  
>  “Well, I admit his writing style suggests that he may have been paid by the word.”  
>  “Or, was it by prepositional phrase?” Miss Fisher asked wittily.  
>  “I believe it was by the comma,” added Jack with a light laugh.  
>  _Really? I asked._  
>  “We weren’t speaking to you, Miss Voyeur. We’re canoodling,” said Miss Fisher as she loosened Jack’s tie.

The writer jokes extensively with everyone, and above all herself and her ability to postpone things: “I was now ready to read. But first I went online to post clever comments on fan sites, discover new fic, and search for pretty pics of Jack.” 

Yes, we’ve all been there. Let’s just say that reading doesn’t completely go to plan.

OllyJay and solitary_cyclist, [“Now We’re Talking”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12249327/chapters/27833301), is the first fic in a trope challenge with zero in wordcount! This is all in pictures, kind of like comics, very beautiful. It also has several levels of commentary – if I understand it correctly it’s two viewer, who also become writers here. They are talking to each other and “to the tv screen”, but also Jack is talking to them – first saying he doesn’t think Phryne and he would work as a couple, and then, after some turning points, he instead takes over and does it “his way”, which is more romantic. The struggle between writers and Jack is delightful. 

In the last image, of Jack standing at the airfield watching Phryne fly away, one of the viewers says “What do we do now?” and Jack answers “Nothing. It’s the perfect ending”. That is a very interesting double view of the ending, calling into question if this is actually possible to solve. It is then followed by a protest and a “To be continued”, with an image of the coming movie – so it’s posing the question but not giving any answers. The format of this fic, and the slight uncertainty for me whom the speech bubbles belong to, kind of enhances the effect, I think.

As the final story of the trope challenge, to sum it all up, I had to put @firesign23, [“Baby It’s Cold Outside”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMOct2017/works/12342504). This is like the ultimate fourth wall breaking and commenting on the Kickstarter teasers – this fic really does it all. The headlines are from all the different things the Kickstarter promised as rewards, for example, as one of them was the promise of an extra storyboard, the fic includes a storyboard. It is a very fun one too where Aunt P in an enormous bow manages to tease Bert. All six short parts of the fic also include the snippet that formed the bonus challenge, put in many of the characters mouth in different parts.

When Phryne and Jack use the dialogue a second time, it continues: “Do you ever feel, Miss Fisher, like we have been here before?” / She shrugged. “I’m quite certain I’d remember _that_ , Jack. Alas, I am forever unfulfilled.”

In the last snippet, the whole family is back together and there is wonderful teasing of their dofferent personalities – Dot telling off Hugh, Jane stating one thing and then disappearing – and “When no answer was forthcoming they quickly forgot her again”. Finally, it’s time for “hot cocoa and rejoicing, because the author gave up on plot several sections ago.” I would never have guessed that it was possible to have so many references and jokes in one short fic.

***

That’s all for this month. The October fic challenge seemed so hard in the beginning of the month, but it still resulted in a large amount of fics – lovely, varied, and very self-aware. The November challenge has been pronounced, to quite some delight of the fans. It’s [“An (Un)expected Marriage”](http://firesign23.tumblr.com/post/167011964437/mfmm-year-of-tropes-november-challenge), and I am looking forward to the coming month!


	11. “We need to get warm” – the fics of the MFMM Bonus Trope

Alright, since I was the one who started the challenge, and since Ollyjay sounded disappointed that I hadn’t intended to make an overview of the bonus trope, I will do it!

For the bonus trope of October I challenged the Miss Fisher fic writers to use the snippet from the Miss Fisher Kickstarter, “We need to get warm.” / “At the South Pole they recommend skin to skin contact…” – but with complete freedom about how, where and uttered by whom. Like always in this fandom, the resulting fics are amazing – fun and endearing and romantic and sometimes angsty, and all somehow coming out of that dialogue. This was meant as a celebration of the Kickstarter, and it certainly feels celebratory.

I’m sorry I don’t have time to write as long as I sometimes do for the monthly tropes, but I thought a short survey could still be nicer than nothing, and a good way to maybe find fics you’ve missed. There are so many lovely details in the fics, and I urge you to read them. ([Here is the full collection.](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMBonusOctober) Some fics were both for the October trope and the Bonus trope, so there are overlaps.)

The lines about the South Pole can be a flirty exchange said quickly on the way to something else, or they can be shivered through blue tinged lips with a very real fear of dying from the cold. Here, I will list the fics with respect to the danger the snippet is used in (please feel free to disagree with my danger-o-meter!)

The first, from my danger-o-meter deemed to be the least dangerous one, is geenee27, [“Pyjamas”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMBonusOctober/works/12563192), a story that takes place in a rather cozy and warm bed at home – even if Phryne and Jack speak of the cold and there is an actual appearance of woollen socks. In TeaandBanjo, [“Compromise”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMBonusOctober/works/12570460), the setting is a cabin borrowed over a weekend, and it’s used between Dot and Hugh.

We also have some rather theoretical fics, where the danger equally is low. In scruggzi & whopooh, [“Direct From the Source”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMBonusOctober/works/12565180), the snippet is used as a writing exercise, and we get the fictional attempts from the three characters Phryne, Jack and Hugh on this theme. There might be a danger, but it’s more about revealing too much about oneself through ficcing. In QuailiTea, [“Having a Chat”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMBonusOctober/works/12366408) the writer talks to Jack and Hugh in a very intricate way, and the snippet is included in their conversation and commented on as an example of the writer’s craft. leafingthroughbooksandtea inserts it as a dialogue overheard by Jack as he’s confused on the set in her [“What the Hell Did I Drink?”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12364656). Fire_Sign, [“Baby It’s Cold Outside”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMBonusOctober/works/12342504), is a _smorgasbord_ of ways to use the snippet – she writes it in no less than six different ways: by Phryne and Jack in a cabin in the alps; by Phryne and Dot on a travel; in a conversation about a movie; by Aunt P teasing Bert; again by Phryne and Jack, and Jack gets the sense this is a déjà vu; and finally by Jane, while the whole family is together, and when she’s said it she disappears, without anyone noticing.

The dialogue is used as a flirting by the side, while Phryne and Jack are talking about a planet they’re heading to together with the Doctor, in scruggzi's [“DRU-14/10/17-KS-1″](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMBonusOctober/works/12344934). In aljohnson's [“Senses and shivering…”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMBonusOctober/works/12343299), the flirty comment is inserted into the tv series’ canon, in the Queenscliff episode, in the imagined scene that should be there, after Phryne and Jack have come out of the water after their nightly sleuthing.

In 221A_brina's[“Shelter”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMBonusOctober/works/12342540), the two detectives have been able to take cover in a cabin, and the remark is a flirty one in this soon rather cozy environment, whereas in flashofthefuse, [”Any Port in a Storm”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMBonusOctober/works/12344424), Phryne is in danger and Jack is searching for her, but the exchange is not between them but between Jack and Bert, which gives it another and very humorous touch.

***

Now we’re getting closer to danger and angst. In Eara,[“There’s a pink elephant in the cool pantry”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMBonusOctober/works/12584564), Phryne and Jack get caught in a cool pantry and need to find a way to survive, while in Allison_Wonderland, [“Frozen in Your Arms“](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMBonusOctober/works/12569068), they’re locked into a freezer car on a train and things look very dire. In rositalg,[“Seclusion, Self-incrimination, and the South Pole”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMBonusOctober/works/12396732), we find the two detectives in a cabin, and Phryne is in real danger of hypothermia, which makes Jack contemplating radical measures. 

CollingwoodGirl, [“Survival of the Fittest”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMBonusOctober/works/12363099), instead has Jack being threatened by the cold. Phryne drags him out of a river after he has given chase of a criminal into it. They have no where to go and he’s soaked and cold; Phryne must see to it that he doesn’t freeze to death in their car.

The final fic on my scale is Ollyjay's [“Timing Is Everything”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12482532/chapters/28413420), where Phryne has been dragged into the forest at her parent’s house in England, threatened by a gun. Even as she manages to fight the man and carry on, she’s still too cold and far from help in the forest. Jack, on the other hand, has just arrived to England. He has comeafter her only to realise she’s gone. There is a search, there is a cottage, and there is a writer kind enough to write an extra, more explicit, chapter when her readers begged her for it.

I want to thank you to all for giving this a shot. It’s been such a pleasure to read all these suggestions about the South Pole!


	12. Did someone say I do? The MFMM November challenge

In November, there was time for wedding bells to ring—but also for plenty of twists about how to get there, or maybe not get there at all. The trope was “An (Un)Expected Marriage”, and this is really one of the tougher questions in the Miss Fisher world—in what circumstances could Phryne possibly be aligned with the idea of marriage? And how can Phryne and Jack find a joint view? This is a mystery just as much as the murder mysteries. The fandom, this month just as in others, decided to go all in to twist and turn the trope in different directions, except one, it seems: here are not really easy weddings without struggle or a special take. Just as the trope name suggests, as well as [the collection teasingly called “Did I say I do?”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMNov2017/works), there’s room for all kinds of interpretations and surprises. 

Apologies for being late with this overview for November, I have had a bad case of RL—let’s just agree this fits with December as an amnesty month, okay?

First out are fics where the marriage happens to other people.

In 912luvejaxlean’s lovely [“Something old”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMM2017/works/12840153), the focus is on Dot and Mr Butler in the preparations for Dot’s wedding. Dot has for her Four Wishes something from Phryne and something from Mac, and then Mr Butler offers her something old. It’s perfectly sweet without being too sweet at all. There is the expected marriage coming up between Dot and Hugh, and there is the unexpected marriage in that we learn about Mr B’s backstory and marriage. There are so many lovely details, and the moment between Mr B and the young bride-to-be becomes a very meaningful one. “Mr. Butler looked down at the promise of Dot’s future arrayed upon Miss Fisher’s dining room table. He felt and remembered a past that was so long ago. Unable to meet the young woman’s eyes, he blinked back tears.”

Also Inzannatea’s [“Altar’d State”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMNov2017/works/12683823) is emotionally intense, although in a completely different setting. It plays a lot with the readers’ expectations, and unfortunately I’ll have to spoil it a little bit here. Reading the story, one might for quite some time think it is about Phryne and Jack marrying, and Jack being surprisingly tipsy on this occasion. That connection is definitely emphasized by a dialogue like this about Aunt P:

>   
>  “It was very nice of her to throw this party,” Jack noted quietly, “even if it is awful. ‘Society’ can take a flying leap as far as I’m concerned,” he added as a quiet aside.  
>  “She adores you, Jack,” she said, “she knows how much this means to you, even if you won’t admit it.”

But Inzannatea has cleverly other options up her sleeve, and it turns out to be another couple marrying—and one of those two is very dear to Jack, and the cause for him drinking a little too much. It all makes sense in a lovely way.

***

The next, and largest, section consists of fics that play with the idea of marriage in different ways, but dammit, many of us find it super hard to make them actually marry like normal people would! There are many different takes on this, and they are all delightful.

fromaLongLineofTVDetectives, [”Well, that was unexpected…”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMNov2017/works/12661791) plays with many things: the idea of the unexpected, the only one bed trope, and marriage as a ruse to get out of a difficult situation. It has a lovely set-up where Phryne and Jack have done that thing they often do in fic: take shelter in a cabin from an unrelenting weather. This time, though, the owner discovers them—and he has a gun. He doesn’t believe in Jack’s innocence, and there is a wonderful scene where Phryne steps in front of them, naked from the waist up, and stops the nonsense: ‘“He’s Detective Inspector Jack Robinson,” Phryne stated, her voice so loud and commanding that no man present could doubt the veracity of her statement. “I am his partner. And his wife.”’ It’s a great scene, and it’s even better as one of the (disputed but famous) stories of the original Phryne from ancient Greece is that she saved her own life by disrobing and baring her breasts in front of her judges.

Where fromaLongLineofTVDetectives’ fic gives us marriage as a ruse, 221A_brina‘s delightful [“Rules of Engagement”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8333854/chapters/19089712) instead deals with the aftermath of such a ruse. Jack manages to flirt extensively with Phryne by reminding her she claimed they were engaged when they went to the RAAF base in “Murder and the Maiden”. He sends her a gift and writes in the letter “Imagine my surprise when driving onto RAAF Base 19 last month to find out that, not only was I engaged, but that I had no recollection of the proposal. I do pride myself in my ability of recall, but it seems that any and all memory of this particular incident has completely escaped me.“

He also manages to suggest they meet up for dinner. Phryne is delighted with his letter—”Cheeky man! Who would have thought he’d grow so bold?”—and decides to answer in kind, although that chapter hasn’t been posted yet.

A fic that touches on the marriage trope is JustMyType, [“Wrong Adventure”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12949971/chapters/29599962)—her first fic in the fandom, welcome!—is a lovely fic that predominantly deals with the miscommunication trope, as Phryne has mistakenly managed to send a very harsh telegram to Jack from her travels with her father. In the end there is also a hint of the fake marriage trope, and to top it up there is a wonderful note where the writer laments the difficulty to get the characters to misbehave, and manages to cover an impressive amount of the tropes—fake marriage, metafiction, and finally also the Bonus October trope:

>   
>  \- Did she just mash another trope into the author notes?  
>  \- Can we get that fourth wall back up now? It’s getting cold in here.  
>  \- Quickly! We need to warm up!  
>  \- Well, at the South Pole they recommend skin to skin contact…  
>  \- (eye rolls all round)text

Fire_Sign's [“A Multitude of Sins”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMNov2017/works/12600188) is such a clever take on the trope, allowing Phryne and Jack to stay in a grey zone between marriage and non-marriage, and with both of them being completely in on it. It’s a lovely almost-marriage, dealing with the problems of both marrying and not marrying, and it’s told from the rather snarky perspective of Dot. Dotis meeting them at the port as they return to Australia, and wonders about the two of them: “Her miss had been rather vague about the specifics of who was travelling with her and how—Dot had enough sense to know that Inspector Robinson’s conveniently timed holiday was by no means a coincidence, but those two did have a remarkable knack for missed opportunities.” Dot is so in control of the situation, noticing everything and telling her husband off in an adorable way:

>   
>  It was Hugh who spotted her first, raising a hand in acknowledgment before pausing.  
>  “That’s the inspector with her,” he said quietly.  
>  Dot smiled.  
>  “Hugh Collins, if you say one word to scare him off…”  
>  “Not certain we have to worry about that, Dottie. He’s just kissed her. In broad daylight.”  
>  Well, at least Doctor MacMillan wouldn’t have to get blindingly drunk before dinner as she’d threatened to do. It seemed Miss Fisher’s best friend was about as fed up with those two as Dot herself was. 

Dot’s shock and disbelief when the two detectives relay that they’re married, and the way she manages to see through the unlikely marriage, are all lovely.

Also in whopooh, [“The Unintentional Eloper”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMNov2017/works/12907290), the marriage doesn’t come easy. The fic is written from the idea that Phryne and Jack are being outed as newly-weds and elopers—“Wedding bells ring for notorious flapper,” the newspaper states—although they never actually did it. But it’s all in the newspaper, so everyone is sure they’re married, including a fuming Aunt P. It’s a light-hearted start, but it quickly turns a bit problematic: how do you navigate an unorthodox and non-public relationship while outed as married? The consequences dawn on them and there are suddenly choices that aren’t so easy to make: “Phryne is shaken, realising she has changed identity for the world, but without her having any control of it herself. Are people thinking of her as a Mrs—a Mrs Robinson, even? Even as she knows she is deeply in love with the accompanying Mr Robinson, the unfamiliar identity still makes her shudder.”

I was definitely intent to make them choose what to do in this fic, but they insisted on leaving it up in the air; it seems I can’t make Phryne marry! 

Another take on this is the absolutely delightful trope is “they might not be married, but they’re still _married af_ ”. In scruggzi’s [“In Perfect Balance”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMNov2017/works/12874623), they are not married but still sometimes behave in a rather conspicuous way, which dawns on Phryne when she realises they actually do have anniversaries. This combines a really rather romantic notion of the two of them relying on each other, while at the same time allowing the banter to be on a complete roll. Jack surprises Phryne every year on the anniversary of the kiss at the airfield, and for the 5th one, he has managed to take his flyer’s licence.

>   
>  “Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” she asked, fully impressed by her partner’s efforts.  
>  “Don’t tell me your legendary powers of deduction have deserted you, Miss Fisher.”  
>  He exited the car and crossed over to open Phryne’s door, taking her hand as she stepped lightly down onto the grass. She spun in his arms, reaching up to kiss him swiftly on the lips.  
>  “I was attempting to employ my equally legendary powers of persuasion.”  
>  Jack, however was unmoved. “Clearly, I’ve acquired an immunity over the years, must have been a survival instinct.”

When Jack takes the wheel with a steady hand, he encourages Phryne to wing-walk, and that might be the sweetest metaphor for the balance in their relationship in existence; Phryne’s heart racing “in excitement and exhilaration as together they held their balance, risking everything in perfect safety.”

The conversation about why they never married is adorable, and I admit I squeed when I came to this dialogue and its way if being romantic in a very toned down way. Phryne has asked Jack if he regrets it:

>   
>  “No, I don’t - I don’t think you were made to be any man’s wife, and, I think I’d rather be your partner than your husband in any case.”  
>  It was her turn to smile, tilting her head back to meet his eyes now the question was safely answered.  
>  “You would?”  
>  He nodded seriously, “Plausible deniability.” 

Fire_Sign,[“Le Pont des Amours”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13013553) includes a similar idea of not-marrying, set in the most romantic place possible, a bridge of the name “The Lovers’ Bridge”. Above all the fic includes delicious banter between the two of them—as much as they have time to between the snogging. There’s even a small nod to the story of the ancient Phryne, as Phryne makes a suggestive remark to Jack and he answers: “Is that why we’re here? I’m not sure the French courts will admit bared breasts as evidence, and I doubt I could convince my colleagues of the necessity.”

Phryne feels the need to talk about why she could never marry, and Jack knows her well:

>   
>  “I’m accustomed to living my life by my own rules—”  
>  “I hadn’t noticed.”  
>  She laughed again, eyes still focused on the lake.  
>  “There are very few things in my life that are non-negotiable. Life has thrown me enough surprises that I’ve learnt to bend with many of them. But the ability to…” she paused, her clearly rehearsed words failing her. “But the ability to walk away if a relationship becomes untenable… that is one place I cannot yield.”  
>  He studied her face for a moment.  
>  “It might surprise you, Miss Fisher, but having lived through years of estrangement and later court appointments… I understand that better than you might expect.” 

But in the spirit of “we’re still _married af_ ”, she also tells a story about kissing on the middle of the bridge entailing you’ll stay together forever, and the banter turns deliciously nerdy and pedantic.

Of course, there are also stories where Phryne _does_ tie the knots. Still, it’s rarely uncomplicated or completely “normal”. reindeerjumper has in [“people will say we’re in love”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12719730) cleverly turned the problem around, still making Phryne a person not easily pegged. She and Jack are married, but secretly—their friends don’t know about it—so she’s still ducking the societal role of wife, and the bond they have forged has still nothing to do with society or expectations. reindeerjumper has a real knack of making their relationship sweet, trusting, and very tight, and in this fic they stand on the side and contemplate their friends, who have come to their party but don’t know it’s an anniversary party.

>   
>  “Here we are, married for ten years, and not a single one of them knows.”  
>  At this, Phryne turned towards Jack and grinned.  
>  “Isn’t it thrilling, to have kept it a secret for this long?” she said.  
>  Jack’s infamous half-smile told her that he agreed.

The fic also contains the brilliant line that kind of sums up the fic: “Only you would think of marriage as clandestine”.

In fromaLongLineofTVDetectives' second fic, [“To Leopards Changing Their Spots”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMNov2017/works/12849048) there is also a marriage, but it is not in the centre of the story or a pivotal part of it. She goes close to the events in the episode “Death Defying Feats” and gives the continuation from Jack’s perspective, also capturing the irrepressible side of Phryne’s father Henry.

>   
>  She downed her drink in one gulp. “Father’s not staying for dinner,” she added.  
>  “Dinner,” Henry chimed. “Certainly, I have time to stay for dinner. I haven’t spent nearly enough time with Inspector Robinson. You’re staying, I hope, Inspector?”  
>  Jack looked to Phryne for guidance on the next answer. Of course, _he_ was staying for dinner. He was the one _invited_ to dinner.

I love that this fic continues on after what we see in the show, it feels like I’m allowed to peek into the things happening off-screen. This is completely credible as a continuation: ‘She moved in closer to him and placed a hand on his lapel, whispering, “Don’t you dare leave while I’m gone.” / “I wouldn’t think of it, Miss Fisher,” he rumbled, holding her gaze, blissfully unaware that Henry was watching them intently.’ There is the ease between Phryne and Jack, the attentiveness of Henry, and the exact pinning of his character: “Conjuring bonhomie among men of all stripes was an instinctual skill that he had honed to a pinnacle before he ever attained the improbable heights of Baron.”

When the scene changes to the ballroom at the Grand, where Bert and Henry peek in as Phryne and Jack are waltzing, we’re allowed to witness Henry’s point-of-view and also a slight streak of sentiments: “Henry watched, rapt, as an expression of pride made its way unbidden across his face. Suddenly, it struck him that this might be the closest he’d ever come to seeing his daughter dance at her own wedding.” This theme of marriage comes back in the end with a wedding that is low-key and late, but beautiful.

luvjaxlean in [“An Intelligent Woman”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13020465) lets Phryne decide on marriage in the quickest and most en passant way possible. The main focus of the fic is other things: Jack’s work and possible promotion and the way they already live together, and the marriage part becomes more of an afterthought:

>   
>  “And, societal norms demand that we marry. Now, you may speak.” She said as she removed her finger.  
>  “Uh, I…”  
>  “I thought you’d never ask. How does next month sound?” 

It feels somehow befitting, that if Phryne would decide to marry, she could make a proper fuss about it, but she could also just decide on the course of action as the most natural thing, going with her spontaneous decision.

A similar spontaneity or rashness we find in Ollyjay’s beautifully named [“A Discourse on Marriage”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13019082/chapters/29774772). Also here, it is Phryne who takes the lead, and rather hastily, after being fed up with them having to be stealthy about their relationship—the scene of how their unorthodox relationship actually turns out to be limiting to her and what they can do is great. The fic makes this very credible, that she would just see how _sensible_ it would be, and then she kind of forgets to actually check with Jack what he wants, which is an interesting part. Jack signs the paperwork and then asks what it is about. which beautifully echoes the time she signs paperwork for him in “Game, set and murder”, and it turns out he has made her a special constable. It speaks about their absolute trust in each other, at the same time that it pushes poor Jack rather too quickly. The last chapter is still not posted, and it’ll be very interesting to see where this leads.

The last section of this post is fics where either Phryne or Jack are involved in marying, more or less outright, but not each other.

teaandbanjo in [“Wilkommen Fräulein Robinson”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12912624/chapters/29501358) takes the trope into a completely different setting. In a fic of small, beautiful moments and quirks, and dreams that nudge at the consciousness showing a possible alternate life, but still only being dreams, there is a husband and wife. The unexpected bit is who they are. The fic is both clever and sad, and it makes a convincing case of the question “what if…. Miss Fisher never happened?” 

geenee27, [”Protest”](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/MFMMNov2017/works/13025790), has such a clever premise—the idea that after Sanderson’s downfall, also other things he has touched would be questioned, including Jack’s and Rosie’s divorce granted by a man now implicated in the scandal. The realisation that Jack might still be married in the law’s eyes, and Phryne’s reaction to these news as Jack manages to blurt out “I got remarried today. Sort of”—it’s all lovely. The jolt of this possibility shakes them enough to come somewhat clear of what they feel about each other. The fic also has the lovely surprise of Jack hearing “a familiar sound of feminine heels” outside his office, but it turns out to be Rosie instead.

Lady_Lola_Lu, [“Scratches”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12872820/chapters/29404332)—also a first MFMM fic, welcome!—is a thorough character study of Phryne and Jack, starting with Jack rather dismissively answering “Why would I want to do that?” when Phryne wonders if he’d want to marry. The conversation is about marriage, and it suggests how complicated this is for them even as none of them actually want to do it. The fic highlights insecurities, memories, and emotions from both sides, partly in relation to the half clandestine nature of their relationship, and partly from their different personalities and histories. In the very end, there is a cliff hanger that upends everything, but we know nothing of exactly how—until the possible continuation might come, that is.

Ollyjay, [“French Appetites”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12746181/chapters/29072370) is a delightful and teasing fic, set as a reunion fic that goes very wrong before it goes right. Jack comes after Phryne to England, but she is not meeting him at the port and when he seeks her out, she is gone. Henry Fisher gives him very low hopes—“I’m sorry, lad but she’s larking around Europe with some old friends, has been since we got here”—and when Jack retreats to his uncomfortable boarding room he’s almost giving up. Only through the delightful interference of Guy and Isabella (with a great perspective from Isabella, assessing “Phryne’s policeman” as sad, something that “added rather than detracted from his allure”) is Jack set on the right track, to seek Phryne out in Paris. When he comes there, he finds her in a wedding dress and with a husband, and there is some wonderful heartbreak, incredulity, fighting, and A Very Hurt Jack before the misunderstanding is cleared up—to give us the delicious scene of Phryne, dressed in an elaborate white wedding dress, kissing Jack on a busy footpath while the groom is standing awkwardly a few feet away (oh I would love to see fanart of this!). It all turns out to have been a case, but Phryne has married this young man for real, which allows Jack to actually have “a torrid affair with another man’s wife”.

I’ll end this overview with flashofthefuse’s brilliant [“Penny Dreadful”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12712497/chapters/28991805), that manages to bring in both the November trope and the October trope of metafiction (”there is fanfic in our universe”) in the same story. It is a both amusing and touching fic where Phryne finds a story that is suspiciously close to her life, about a _Fannie Disher_ and an _Inspector Jake Robertson_. It turns out that Dot and her friend Alice take pleasure in writing this kind of fic. Phryne asks to read it, and what she reads is an over-dramatic and wonderfully caricatured version of fanfic—complete with a self-insert of Alice herself, under the telltale name Miss Winsome. It has metaphors like “The silence hung menacingly in the air above them like the blade of a guillotine”, but it also manages to be engaging and a good read.

There are several really interesting points in this fic. First, the way the fic is melodramatic in a fun way, where many fanfic writers likely can recognise herself a little. Second, that Phryne might laughs at it first (“It’s tragically romantic” says Dot, and Phryne thinks: ”A tragically romantic story featuring herself and Jack? She’d probably find it comical”), but as the story goes on she is truly affected by what she is reading, rooting for the characters.

Third, that Alice in the story can’t imagine a happy ending for the independent flapper and the steady policeman; instead giving Jake another woman to marry. Although Fannie and Jake declare their love for each other, and although Jake doesn’t want anything more than Fannie saying she wants him, both their hearts breaking at being separated, they cannot meet. Fannie goes on to live her free life, and they will forever both look back on each other with sadness and some longing. _(This part is so poignant because it is also how many stories about ‘modern women’ historically were written. In the fic Fannie gets to say “I’d only make him unhappy in the end. He’d come to regret me. I can’t offer him what she can. I couldn’t be a proper companion to him. Not the way he’d want me to be.”[I wrote a tumblr post about that](https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/133790564158/phryne-as-the-modern-woman) two years ago, about how Phryne doesn’t have that sad turn when it comes to her love story.)_

Fourth, the way the fictive story makes Phryne want reality to end differently, and the fic pushes her to do something about her own relationship with the inspector—this is set after “Murder and the Maiden” and then continues within “Murder and Mozzarella”. The whole set-up corresponds beautifully to the strain in their relationship because of Group Captain Compton, and makes Phryne’s feelings when she meets Concetta be even more appropriate.

So the unexpected wedding is the wedding in the fictive story, that forces Phryne to consider her own heart more thoroughly, affected by the story even as it annoys her. In the end, her love story doesn’t have to end like the fictive Fannie Disher’s, and the scene from the show where Phryne and Jack “make do” with each other is beautifully expanded,

***

This was all for the November trope—and this was also the last of my overviews of the monthly tropes of MFMM! December is trope amnesty month, where all the old tropes are open for addition, but no new trope has been proclaimed. It has been such a joy to follow the “MFMM year of tropes”, and to read all the amazing stories that have come out of these challenges. According to AO3 no less than 200 fics have been added into [your text](link)the collections by now! That is incredible.

It has been great fun to write these overviews, where I have tried to show how the tropes have been taken in different directions, and I hope that the overviews have been an encouragement for the writers, and perhaps have both led people to read some fics tey had otherwise missed and also see more clearly all these different choices that have been made in the fics. As well as fun it has also been a lot of work, so even as I’m sad it’s over, I’m also a bit relieved. My thought originally wasn’t to cover all the months, I just started to write about January because I found it so interesting, and then after a while it became a thing I decided to do. But now it’s done—the whole year is completed!

Thank you to Fire_Sign for organising these challenges, and to every fic writer who has contributed to the trope collections— _you are all wonderful!_


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